


Book One: Soul

by nanizet



Series: Priyana [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Coming of Age, Fantasy, Gen, Original work - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2019-10-08 19:19:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 47,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17392163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanizet/pseuds/nanizet
Summary: The first book in the Priyana series [link to overall summary]:Soul follows the trio of Nik, Rada, and Kane as they attempt to recapture Amarandos and struggle with the strange new existence they have been thrown headfirst into. With nothing but each other, they must learn to work as a team and not just as three moody teenagers raised by the same man. They journey to the mountain-enshrouded city of Nahvsenn, where they encounter a passionate, well-established underground rebellion simply awaiting the moment to finally take their city back from the evil King Olbert’s reign. Could our trio be the herald of that moment?Also available as a PDF





	1. Tarrin

Though the sun was rising steadily over the half-crumbled brick roofs and dusty streets, the dawn was still blue and cold.

Kane made his way through side-streets and ascended the path to the place on the hill he had grown up. Though his heart was racing, his breathing was quiet and his expression as steady as he could force it. Making his way up the hill exposed his skin to the chilly breeze, and his eyes to an overhead view of the town which was ever so familiar to him. Its messy assortment of dirt streets and randomly-placed buildings intertwined, and were surrounded by the woods around Tarrin, which were just beginning to green again as the spring was finally breaking through the cold.

In town, the first trace of smoke from the chimney of the bakery was striping the quiet sky in a thin grey line. If he looked out further he could see a few men making their way down to the fields to the east, tools and hats in hand.

From the centre of Tarrin, there was a cry. It was dark in nature, the sound carrying its suffering to Kane, whose eyes were drawn back to the armoured figures in their town square. They were kicking at the baker they had dragged out with a disdainful air. From this distance Kane couldn’t make out what was being said, but he had seen enough just moments before anyway. He instead wrapped his coat further around him to block out the cold breeze that flew around him as he ran the last mile up the hill to his home.

Kane pushed the door open, sending with himself a flurry of movement and chaos into the three-room cottage. The door creaked gently on its hinges, but he paid it no mind as he turned to a tall, bearded man who sat at a small wooden table near an inactive fireplace, dressed in leather armour and a deep red coat, and examining an ornate box that seemed tiny in his large hands. Upon Kane’s entrance, he stood, revealing a sword readily strapped to his belt.

“There are king’s men in the town square.” Kane’s voice was steady, but there was an edge of panic that he couldn’t disguise. “They dragged Jearn out. Kicked him to the ground.”

“What do they want?” The man’s voice was gentle, yet imbued with a fierceness to it, like the way campfires flame with the urge to jump out from within their bounds and raze a forest to the ground.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there long enough to figure out. I only saw what they were doing.”

The man placed the box gently on the mantlepiece above the blackened fireplace, between two candles that sat collecting dust. “Where are Nik and Rada?”

“I don’t know.”

The man headed to the wall near the door, where he pulled a sword in its scabbard from a drawer and handed it to Kane.

“Ama, this is –”

“I won’t have you meet king’s men unarmed.” Ama pushed the door open, hurrying in quick, long strides down the hill, Kane on his trail.

“I have my knife. Or I can use a training sword, instead of…” Kane said, almost jogging to keep up with him.

Ama paused for a moment at the crest of the hill, surveying the quiet morning landscape of Tarrin. In the town square, there were moving figures in dark armour, and faint echoes of Jearn’s cries still carried up the hill.

“You may be a skilled swordsman, Kane, but with just a dagger in your hands you are nothing against king’s men.”

Ama continued along the path again, and Kane was finally able to adjust his step to keep pace with Ama, whose tall stride left his coat whipping out behind him. It had the effect of visually amplifying his air of determination. Next to him, Kane’s teenage figure seemed secondary and transparent, even with the handsome sword strapped to his hip. He tried to emulate the warrior beside him, but he felt he appeared as an overeager pupil next to the genuine confidence of Ama.

When they reached the streets of Tarrin, the dawn had receded more into morning, and the light was now warm instead of grey. The buildings around them were more inviting as they no longer loomed as a shadow amongst shadow in the pitch of night as they had before. Yet as they drew nearer to town square, Jearn’s cries could be heard loud and clear, along with the calm, ruthless projection of a cold voice.

“You should be taught a lesson, the way you behave around me. If this dirt town is filled with scum who behave such as you, then I see no reason for…”

Even with the voice’s unfamiliarity, the sound of it alone sent ice through Kane’s blood.

Ama’s voice boomed across town square as he and Kane rounded the corner into the open centre. “I believe you can leave the baker alone. I’m sure he’s well-understanding of whatever your point was by now.”

The king’s men paused to look at the newcomer to the scene. Jearn, seeing the opportunity, fled into the confines of his bakery, leaving speckles of blood from his broken nose on the dirt behind him. The man who had been kicking Jearn sighed and stepped towards Ama with an air of jovial cruelty. Up closer, Kane could see that the man, despite his tall height, couldn’t be older than Kane himself. The man raised one dark, thin eyebrow towards Ama.

“And who might you be?”

“The blacksmith.”

“The _blacksmith_? Gods, this place is a pile of grime. The baker doesn’t bow to me, and now the blacksmith dares step in my way. You should be made an example of also. As well as this young man with you.”

“You haven’t introduced yourself. As far as we all know, you’re just a teenage boy in robes.”

This seemed to strike a particularly sensitive nerve for the cold stranger.

“ _Teenage boy in robes?_ How _dare_ you?! Leander, prince of Priyana, son of King Olbert and heir to the throne needs no introducing and will not be referred to in a term as mocking as _teenage boy in robes_.” Leander drew his sword and directed the sharp steel point just an inch away from Ama’s throat. “I should have your head, old man.”

“You’re quite welcome to try, young prince. I find I’m quite fond of keeping my head, though, and taking it may not be as easy as you expect it to be, boy.”

Kane’s eyes flicked down to see Ama’s hand gripped securely around his sword at his hip. Kane followed suit and glanced around them. Leander’s men had already drawn their weapons with their prince, and all were in stance. Kane subtly prepared his feet as he scanned each enemy.

It was then that he noticed the short person next to Leander, whose stance was still casual and their hand only lightly feathering the shortsword at their hip. Yet the tension of battle was craving to spill from their eyes as they stared at Kane with fiery malice. The sight of them filled Kane with an odd sense of oncoming dread, as if the true threat of their being there was yet to come.

***

Nik supposed that, at some point during the night, if he’d just let his sister indulge in whatever strange concoction of revenge she’d planned to make, things might be simpler. But now, as the sun drifted higher and he followed the nimble figure of Rada through back alleyways as the sounds of dogs barking gradually trailed off, that point seemed nigh impossible to return to.

They briefly passed an alley with a beam of sunlight coming down from the main street it led to. In the moment’s time he was able to glimpse through that corridor, realisation dawned on Nik. His eyes widened and he grabbed Rada, stopping her and flinging them both against the wall. His elbows ached where they hit the brick.

“ _Nik_! What is _wro_ –”

“Shut up! You’ve run us right into the middle of town.”

“What? No. I haven’t! I was going for Henret’s farm.”

“No, you weren’t! Look.” Nik pointed his sister’s view in the direction down the alley. Upon seeing where they were, her shoulders slumped. She leaned back.

“Damn it. So you’re right. Whatever. What do _you_ suggest we do, then?”

Nik paused for a moment, leaning back around and staring into the main street. Without adrenaline coursing his veins from their fleeing, his senses were finally able to reattune themselves, and he noticed the talking coming from nearby.

“Is that Ama?” Rada whispered. “What do we – hey!”

“Be quiet!” Nik shoved them behind some crates at the edge of the alley and peered out into the town square, where an entourage of king’s men had gathered, one of whom was pointing his sword at Ama’s throat.

“Oh look, Kane’s there.”

“Where?”

“Just next to Ama, see? You can see the edge of the back of his boot.”

“How do you recognise – wait, where are you going?”

“To get a better angle. Stay in this dank alley if you really like it this much. I, for one, prefer my drama with all involved fully visible.”

Rada headed off, and Nik had no choice but to follow her along the back alleys through lines of washing until he came across his sister again, this time in a similar alley, back pressed against the wall to keep herself hidden amongst the darkness. Nik hastily joined her and leaned around her head of long blonde curls to see into the square.

The stranger still had his sword unsheathed and pointed at Ama’s throat, but at this angle Nik could now see the lines of emotion on his face and hear the dialogue being exchanged in a falsely calm manner.

“Why exactly does this blacksmith believe he can defeat me in combat, hmm, Elwen?” The stranger’s head tilted ever so slightly to the side, towards a short redhead dressed in sturdy leather armour with a shortsword at their hip.

“I don’t know, your highness. But you needn’t bother staining your blade with his blood. I’ll behead this beast for you.”

“You call _him_ a beast? When you were the one who just _watched_ as this ‘prince’ of yours kicked an innocent man to the ground for not bowing to him?” Kane argued. Nik could see that his hand was gripped all too readily around the hilt of a sword at his belt.

“Not bowing to royalty is treason. The man you defend was nothing short of an enemy of the throne. His highness the prince is not one to simply let that disrespect continue. He was dealing with the issue appropriately.”

“He was kicking him for not –”

“Kane!” Ama’s voice was warning, but steady. Kane fell silent. Nik’s eye turned to the ‘prince’ as he spoke.

“This town is nothing more than a speck on the map. I will not hesitate to raze it if your…dishonourable conduct continues further.”

“You’re the only one being dishonourable.”

“Kane…” Ama’s second warning was audible from Nik and Rada’s hiding spot in the alley, but Kane appeared not to hear. The prince’s sword swung from Ama’s throat to Kane’s, and Kane pulled his sword ever so slightly out of its sheath, the sect of steel glittering in the morning sunlight.

“Is it dishonourable to demand respect? Or is it dishonourable to make me burn your pathetic little rat town to the ground? You should let that baker decide whose actions are dishonourable as his shop turns to ash because of you.”

“The dishonourable one is the one to lose in combat. Fight me, and we’ll see who that is.”

“I don’t fight untalented blacksmith’s boys from the country.” The prince readied himself into stance and smirked. “But I’m in a humble mood today. And I do rather love the smell of rats burning.”

Kane was in stance already, and drew his sword fully, letting the blade glimmer. The two circled each other, eyes like hawks’ stares. Ama’s attention had shifted from the prince to Elwen, whose shortsword was drawn in a flash and held protectively as they watched Ama and Kane for movement.

But before any could be made by those in the square, first movement was stolen by the flash of a knife, thrown from next to Nik, accompanied by a wild shout from Rada as the knife grazed the prince’s cheek. The dagger wedged itself into the wooden pillar of the bakery porch. Blood trailed from the fresh cut on the prince’s face.

Seeing Rada now exposed in the sunlight, her stance and second throwing knife prepared in hand clearly indicating her as the culprit, Nik sighed and made the decision to follow her out, not entirely sure what to do except to make sure he was able to stop her from doing anything else stupid.

“This scum town! I’ll –”

“Go ahead and try! Kane would never let that happen!”

“He wouldn’t?”

“No, Nik, he wouldn’t!”

“What exactly is going on anyw–” Nik was cut off by Ama.

“Where were you two last night?”

“Rada stole –”

“Rada _stole?!_ ” Ama seemed furious.

“I did not!”

“Say, what are your names again?” The four’s attention snapped back to the issue at hand.

“That’s of no consequence to you. They’re just two children I look after.”

“ _Children_? I’m fifteen!” Rada’s outburst went ignored by all present.

“If I recall from your little commoner’s tiff…Rada? And…Nik.” A strange look passed across the prince’s face, and he withdrew his sword. Elwen copied the movement and resumed their casual stance, though now they watched the prince with thinly veiled curiosity. The prince wandered over to the knife embedded into the wooden post and pulled it out. He wiped the blood off his cheek with the velvet back of his sleeve. “I don’t fight little girls. I suppose your town will have to apologise for your actions by letting me stay in your finest inn free of charge.”

“I’m afraid our standards of luxury may not be up to yours, Leander.”

“ _Prince_ Leander.” Leander pointed his sword one more time at Ama’s throat, before drawing it back into its scabbard at his hip. “We’ll chat again soon, _Amarandos_.”

***

The sound of the whetstone on his blade was usually a source of pacification to Kane. But now, worry could not escape him through the sharpening slide, and a frown creased his eyebrows downwards.

“It’s situations like these…this is why I tell you two children to stay put. What were you two doing last night that had you appear in front of the _prince_ this morning? You know the danger of this.”

“There was…there’s this girl. She’s the milkmaid’s sister, you know her. Last night I stole her necklace. Serves her right, she –”

“Nikolai. Why did you not stop your sister?”

“I tried! I was running after her when –”

“Next time you’ll try harder. You will not fill your destiny if you can’t even keep your baby sister in line. Today was extremely dangerous. You’ve learned your lesson, now don’t ever run amok like that again.”

“Whatever.” There was a pause, as Ama stared down at Nik. The silence and the tension burned, and Kane continued sliding the whetstone on the sword he had carried at his hip that morning. He heard Rada sigh and stand from the table. Kane glanced up at her, watching as she turned to the fireplace and traced her fingers over the ornate box that Ama had held in his hands that morning.

“Do I ever get a say in what _I_ -” she began to speak, but Nik interrupted her.

“Did you see the way that Leander guy looked at us back there? That was weird.”

“That was the exact reason why you shouldn’t have been there. You know fully well why he looked at you like that.”

Nik raised an eyebrow. “No way. You’ve said it yourself, over and over again. _‘All of Priyana thinks we died twelve years ago.’_ ”

Ama was silent. Nik leaned back in his chair, tilting his head back until he was staring at the log roof, short blond hair reaching towards the floor.

“I’m gonna go check on Jearn. It’s boring in here.”

“No.”

“Oh my gods Ama.”

“It’s dangerous out there for you and your sister with Leander running around town. Kane will go instead.”

“I’ll go with Kane then.”

“You’ll stay here.”

“No.”

Nik raised his head again. There was a moment of tense silence, as Ama and Nik once again stared each other down. Kane simply stood, placing the whetstone back and slid the sword into its scabbard, still at his hip from that morning. Ama had told him to keep the sword at his side until he said so. The weight, which despite being made from metal poured by Kane’s own hands, was still unfamiliar at his hip. Though, with every hour that passed with it at his side it seemed to melt more into him.

“Don’t leave Kane’s sight.”

“Yeah, yeah, Kane’s my babysitter, blah blah blah. What else is new? C’mon man, let’s go.” Nik rolled his eyes, stood from the table, shoving his chair back in a deafening groan, and pushed past Kane and out the front door. Kane hastily followed after him and down the hill towards Tarrin.

“So. Ama finally let you use your own sword, huh?”

“I haven’t even fought with it yet.”

“Better than those stupid training swords he keeps us on. Well, I suppose it’s just _me_ on them now. I don’t think Ama would let me make my own sword anyway, even if I was as good as you are. Probably has some secret ‘this is your destiny, you must use this and only this’ sword stashed somewhere, y’know?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s it like? To make your own sword.”

“Like?” Kane fell silent for a few seconds as they turned a corner around the path and emerged into the first few scattered, half-decayed houses on the outskirts of town. He recalled back to a week ago, napping in hay as he waited for metal to melt. The way his muscles tensed with the recoil as he hit his sword into shape, perfecting the balance of the blade to his fighting style. “It’s hot, I suppose. And kinda tiring.”

“But it’s such a cool thing. I mean, you aren’t that much older than me and you’ve already officially ‘graduated’ sword training or whatever it is.”

“I have to be good. It’s my job.”

“Sure, sure. But you’re naturally, gifted, man, I swear. Do you remember that…that king’s man who came through town and picked a fight with Ama last month? I was pretty surprised he handed that one off to you. He never hands stuff like that off to me. Although you kick my ass every time we spar. I’m not very good at fighting. Anyway, you beat that guy so fast. And he was…what? …twenty years older than you? Oh man. You sell yourself short.”

“I just did what Ama told me to do.”

“Yeah, yeah. Look, we’re here.” Nik gestured to the wooden steps, now decorated with a smattering of drying drops of blood. The two boys climbed and entered the bakery. Jearn sat behind the wooden counter, nursing his nose with a piece of cloth while his daughter dabbed at the scratches on his arm with a wet cloth.

“Hey Jearn.”

“Nik…hello. As you can see, I’ve had a rough start to my morning.”

“Mm. Kane told me what happened. Are you feeling alright?”

“Yes…I used to get a lot worse when I was your age.”

“Haha! Well, you aren’t my age, so tell me truthfully – are you actually alright?”

“Oh, yes, yes. Mary here is cleaning me up nicely…you’re such a sweet girl.”

“Thank you, father.”

“You _are_ such a sweet girl, Mary.” Mary blushed as Nik continued. “Is he _actually_ alright?”

“Y-yes…but…”

“But?”

Mary sighed. “There’s a nasty graze right here. It goes quite deep in some places. I’m worried it may get infected, or that the damage is deeper than I can see. It just won’t stop bleeding, you see.”

Nik peered at Jearn’s arm. His body blocked the wound from Kane’s sight, but he heard as Nik let out a relieved sigh at the sight of it.

“It’s bad, but I know a healing salve that should work. Do you have any fireroot?”

“Yes. We keep some for the –”

“Excellent. Would you fetch it for me, Mary? And some of the usual herbs and juices.”

“O-oh, yes! I-I mean, I’ll be right back with that.” Mary carefully re-covered her father’s wound with the wet cloth, then headed through a sturdy wooden door into the house upstairs.

“Ama is a very good man. Finest blacksmith Tarrin’s ever had, and even braver than Gerr’s son who joined the king’s men all those years ago. You’re growing up to take after Ama, Kane. That’s certainly a good thing.”

“Uh, th-”

“Jearn, do you have a map of Priyana?”

“I do. Just on that wall over to your right. Why?”

Nik wandered over to the map and leaned in, tracing a finger over rivers and trade routes and cities and towns, making noncommittal humming noises as the cogs in his brain turned to whatever goal they were churning towards. Kane sighed, and dragged a nearby chair over to sit down on and wait out Nik’s moment.

“That boy’s always been a little strange, hasn’t he?”

“I guess I’m just used to it now. I hardly notice anymore.”

Nik made an unusually loud noise of curiosity. “Jearn, where did those king’s men come from?”

“From the road from the south.”

“…I see…may I ask one more question of you?”

“Go on.”

“Just a bit of trivia, but…do you know Ama’s real name?”

“His…? Isn’t it just Ama?” Jearn seemed baffled.

“Hmm. I suppose it is.”

“What is it, son?”

“Oh, nothing really. Mary, there you are. Let me show you how to make this salve. Now, first you crush the wild redleaf…”

 

***

That night, Ama locked the doors and kept the fire low. It was a cold, unusually stormy night, and the wind rattled the windows and sang eerily like banshees outside the log cottage on the hill. Dinner was had early and in uncomfortable silence, Rada and Nik still being glared at by Ama for their previous misdeeds throughout the entire event. As soon as they were done, Ama sent the three teenagers to bed, despite it being two hours before they usually went to sleep.

They lay on the beds they had slept on throughout most of their childhoods, and, afraid of upsetting Ama any more than they had done in the early hours of that day, opted to fall asleep quickly. Kane still had Nik’s unsaid pondering on his mind from earlier in the bakery. He dreamed of maps morphing into Leander’s sword and giving his neck a papercut that turned into Jearn’s graze, wet with fresh salve. He could hear crying – his own crying, but higher pitched, and he was eight years old again and covered in bruises and filth, skinny and constantly living on violent self-preservation as his only instinct, a wild wolf in an ancient city.

“Kane.”

Kane’s eyes flew open, and his dagger was held protectively above himself before he could stop to think. The dagger was knocked from his hands with ease, and his wrists held tight in a strong, paternal grip.

“Kane. It’s Amarandos.”

Kane squeezed his eyes shut, willing his panicked breathing to still. Finally, he gently opened his eyes. Outside, a storm had come in, and rain drilled against the windows while thunder rolled across the sky. A flash of lightning illuminated Ama’s face, and he let out the breath that had been clenched in his lungs.

“Come to the table.”

Kane nodded, and slipped quietly behind Ama. They sat. The fireplace did not burn, but a single lantern at the centre of the table illuminated their faces in a ghostly glow. The warmth from his blankets quickly wore away, and he held back shivers.

“I’m afraid things have taken a turn that I did not expect to arrive for another few years at least.”

“Is this about that prince?”

“Yes.”

“Nik said that –”

“Nik is correct most of the time, but he is also naïve. This affects his judgment. Yes, _most_ of the kingdom believes him and Rada to be dead. And I am almost certain that Olbert believes this as well. But it would be reasonable for the prince to consider that it is possible for them to be alive, and to keep watch for them, because they are indeed the largest threat to the prince’s throne...dead or alive.” Ama stood from his chair and picked up the lantern. He reached towards the fireplace and held the lantern to the stones. He ran his fingers along until he eyed a certain one. He placed the lantern on the mantel and pulled out the stone. Inside was a surprisingly large space, stuffed with soft bags.

“You must remember all your training. It has been a little over ten years since I rescued you from the streets of Nahvsenn, but whatever may happen tomorrow…remember your duty, and remember Nikolai and Radomira’s destinies.” Ama shoved the stone back into place and picked the lantern from the mantelpiece. “I’m sorry for waking you at so late an hour.”

“It’s alright.”

Ama paused for a moment, then headed to a wall where the sword Kane had sprouted at his hip all day was hung next to Ama’s. He carried it carefully to the table and lay it in front of Kane.

“This sword is yours, Ismet. Don’t doubt that.”

Kane’s eyes fell to the sword. His fingers traced the hilt, feeling the leather he’d wrapped himself, the single piece of amber embedded in the handle.

“I won’t.” There was a sense of something deeply, deeply wrong in the air. It made Kane uneasy. “I promise.”

Ama smiled, but there was a hint of something darker, a kind of odd finality in his eyes.

“Good lad. Now, head back to bed.”

“Goodnight.”

He headed to the bedroom door, but before he went back to his blankets he turned to look one last time at the room. Ama sat at the table, staring thoughtfully at Kane’s sword. Kane peered behind him at the fireplace and located the hiding stone. His eyes journeyed back up to the top of the fireplace, to the mantelpiece, where a few unlit candles sat, collecting dust, and the ornate wooden box that once sat there was gone.

***

Rada decided, as the warm spring sun rose over Tarrin and the clash of swords clung to Kane and her brother’s grunts, that the affairs of the previous day could be forgotten about easily enough. The stranger had proclaimed his princehood, kicked their baker, and Rada had thrown her knife at him, but the next morning had come and Ama seemed unaffected. It was just as if there _wasn’t_ the crown prince of Priyana sitting around somewhere in the town at the base of the hill. They had woken up early as usual, had breakfast as usual, and then Ama pushed blades into Nik and Kane’s hands and had them attack each other until lunch. As usual.

There was just one exception – and that exception, for today’s case it seemed – could only really affect _Rada_.

Rada, _as_ _usual_ , had been given nothing to do. She _could_ , of course, head towards the farmland and onto Henret’s farm, where the archery range sat at the forest’s edge near the edge of his pumpkin crops. But that involved walking through town, and the _only_ difference today’s rules had from any other day’s rules was that no one was to leave the hill.

“Nikolai! Your parries are weak as usual. Centre your gravity and shift your focus. Now, try again.” Ama was sitting in the shade of the tree next to Rada. She could smell the sweat and iron of the morning’s smelting on his clothes and his skin as the breeze blows past. She wrinkled her nose. Even though she had lived with it since she was four years old – just a tad younger than her oldest memory of a warm embrace in dark caramel skin and soft curls, the faint smell of fire sticking to her mother’s skin as she held her – she still found it unpleasant. What was even more unpleasant was the way Ama would call her out for sitting in the grass ‘improperly’. She had no idea what that meant, but because she recalled the rule now, she grinned slyly and crossed her legs, making sure to rub the hems of the dress into the fresh grass until they were dyed a faint green. If Ama wouldn’t let her entertain herself then she was going to rebel.

Nik fell face down in front of her. He groaned, rubbed at his rib, then turned over to meet Kane’s sword at his throat.

“Dude.”

“Stand up, Nikolai.” At Ama’s order, Kane slipped his sword into its hilt and offered his hand. Nik took it and pulled himself up on it. The sun shone faintly behind Kane, illuminating his cheekbones and making his sweat shine in a gentle glow. Rada watched the way his muscles flexed under his skin as he dragged Nik up. She sighed dreamily.

“Again.”

Kane was skilled enough to be able to draw his sword and knock her brother down in a second flat, but he allowed a three second headstart for Nik. A smile pulled at Rada’s lips. Kane was talented, yet also understanding and kind.

With another loud _clang_ , they started another round. Rada let the gentle breeze rustle through her hair and cool her neck as she relaxed her eyes on the sight of Kane moving agilely around Nik’s blade.

Somewhere in the woods close by were those nooks she, Nik, and Kane hollowed out of a tree when they were kids. Maybe she could go see if the boys had been hiding anything from Ama that could possibly entertain her. She glanced towards the general direction of where the tree was. It was too far away – and no _way_ was she letting Ama have any kind of clue to where she kept getting her throwing knives when Ama would throw them away every time he caught her with them. She groaned and resorted to leaning back against the tree and letting the sound of her brother and Kane blur into the background.

She was almost falling asleep when a shortsword was thrust between the two fighters. Instead of hitting each other’s swords they hit the sword of the short redhead king’s man from yesterday with an odd, half-echoing half-muted _clang_.

“His highness the prince demands your presence, Amarandos.” _Elwen_ , Rada’s mind vaguely recalled, tucked their sword back into its sheath. Their hand stayed placed on its hilt readily.

“Has he decided that –” Ama began, but was abruptly cut off.

“He will see you in the centre of the town where you met yesterday morning. He expects you there in ten minutes. Failure to turn up will result in your baker’s head on a spike.” Elwen stared Ama in the eyes, face unreadable, then abruptly turned and headed calmly back down the hill, short figure disappearing below the peak one step at a time. When they were fully out of sight, Rada’s eyes flicked back to her brother and Kane. Kane had sheathed his sword, and Nik had dropped his on the grass.

The breeze blew the gentle perfume of wildflowers from the meadow beyond the forest, and Rada realised that Ama was no longer next to her and walking to the same steps Elwen just disappeared down. He paused for a moment and turned slightly towards them, half his face obscured from Rada’s view in its angle towards her.

“Children. Do not leave this hill.”

“Ama –”

“Kane. Remember what I told you.”

“I…”

But Ama’s silhouette, sword at his side and strong, tall body, had already started to descend the hill.

***

They sat on the ground in silence for about five minutes before Nik stood up and walked confidently towards town. Rada didn’t even realise he had gone until he was just about to disappear out of her sight. She tripped as she rushed after him. When she caught up, she grabbed the back of his carnelian red sash at his waist and yanked her older brother to a stop.

“Nik? What are you doing?”

Nik turned around and grinned at Rada. “Don’t you want to see Ama kick that Leander’s ass?”

“I…” Rada grit her teeth. “…Yes.”

“Then let’s go.”

“Ama said it’s dangerous for us to be in town right now, though,” Rada said. She was already walking at the same quick pace as Nik towards Tarrin.

“Since when do you listen to Ama?”

Rada followed Nik through their well-established shortcuts. There was no doubt they’d be there before Ama and Elwen – they had over a decade of experience running ‘amok’ around town. Elwen had only a day and a half’s.

It was only when they were nestling themselves into the alleyway hiding spot they’d found the previous morning that Rada noticed the missing presence.

“Hey, Nik.” Nik was transfixed on the curved row of king’s men behind Leander. They were in front of the bakery again, though this time closer to the crumbling old fountain in the very centre of the square. “Nik!”

“Huh?”

Rada sighed, and shook her head, exasperated. “Nik, _where’s Kane_?”

“I thought he was behind you.”

“I did too! But he’s nowhere!”

“Well, he isn’t _nowhere_. Technically, he has to be _somewhere_. Unless he’s created a way of transcending corporeality.” Rada glared at him. Nik scowled. “But I get what you mean.”

“Then don’t make things difficult, idiot! We have to find Kane.”

“Kane can look after himself. He’s the oldest. And the best swordsman.”

“And if we get attacked? Your skill with a sword is…lacking.”

“Well, currently I don’t have a weapon with me.”

“ _You what!?_ What about your hunting knife?”

“Well, I’m pretty terrible with it. I figured Ama would protect us if the situation came to violence.”

“You – you’re hopeless. I can’t believe _you’re_ the heir, and not me. Nik, we _have got to find Kane_.”

“Why are we finding me?”

“Kane!”

“Hey, man.”

“Where were you? I thought you were behind me.”

“I was. I just had to…sort some things out first.”

Nik turned to Kane and narrowed his eyes. “Isn’t it _your job_ to protect Rada and I?”

“Nik, leave him alone.”

“You were the one who wanted to find him!”

“Well, he’s here now, so drop it. Look, Ama’s here.”

The three turned at Rada’s notification, and were met with the sight of Ama patiently standing next to Elwen in front of Leander and his posse of king’s men.

“Amarandos.”

“What am I here for? I’m rather busy at home –”

“You know why you’re in front of me.”

“Why don’t you inf –”

“Men.” Leander ordered, gesturing forward lazily. Four king’s men detached from the crescent formation behind the prince to grab Ama’s arms. Ama shrugged out of their grip easily. He reached for his sword at his side, but Elwen approached silently from behind him, shoved him roughly to his feet, and took his sword from him. Ama began to resist, but Leander spoke.

“Resist, and Elwen will burn down your little hut on the hill with those three children of yours tied to the beams.” Leander sneered as Ama became limp. Elwen drew their shortsword and pressed it to Ama’s neck as the king’s men tied his hands together and took the rest of his weapons from him.

Rada felt a rush of air as Kane stood up, ready to take on Leander and his men. Kane’s arm was already reaching to his sword. Kane was stepping forward. Rada could barely react, still in shock from witnessing the way Ama had submitted so easily. With what little focus she had, she lifted an arm stiffly towards Kane, only to realise he was gone. She looked around her, to see that Nik had already pulled him back down.

“You leave us here defenceless and I’ll kill you myself.”

Rada’s attention turned to Nik immediately. Nik was never cruel to Kane, rarely even issued orders, despite it being Kane’s directive to follow his and Rada’s every command. Rada saw a glint in her brother’s eye then – a glint she only remembered distantly from only a few times in her life. It was from his right eye, which was wet with involuntary tears, the eyeball twitching ever so slightly in its socket.

Nik was scared.

“I’m sorry.”

Again, Rada could only watch as Kane bowed his head and returned to his crouch behind them. She couldn’t even tear her eyes away from her trembling brother, only heard the sound of Leander, his men, and the captured Ama loading themselves onto their horses and leaving Tarrin.

It seemed the others could barely move as well. For what seemed like a year they crouched, frozen in the spots they had sat themselves in. Rada tried to control her panicked breathing, while Nik squeezed his eyes shut and pinched himself to force himself out of his trance of terror. Rada turned to look at Kane. He was stood again, but his hands were nowhere near the weapons at his hip. His shoulders, usually thrown back in a permanent confident protector’s stance, were loose. He stared blankly at the spot where Ama had been.

Finally, Nik broke their silence. “I-I…”

It was all Rada and Kane could do to turn their attention to him.

“I smell smoke.”

***

The path home had been burned, the grass, newly emerged as springtime broke, now pale white ash. It crackled under their feet, but the sound of the home the three had grown up in burning to the ground vastly deafened their footsteps.

Watching from the patch of trees where the forest started, where they had played as children, where their secret nook they had carved out was, they saw Leander’s men throw their final torch into the blaze, then descend the hill again.

They were far enough away that the fire couldn’t catch them, but Rada could still feel the breeze whip against her face with its lining of razor blade heat. Her eyes watered as the smoke found its way onto her face and her skin felt like it was going to melt off her under her leather boots.

She fell to her knees.


	2. The Burning Hut

To his right, Nik heard a soft sound as Rada’s knees hit the grass. He forced his eyes open as much as he dared, and through shaky vision saw his sister weeping, tear tracks illuminated by the harsh glow of the raging blaze of their home. His eye was still trembling – he couldn’t make it stop, hard as he tried. So he pressed them closed again, unwilling to let his sister or his adopted brother see his weakness.

He knew that out of the three, he was the least warrior-like. He knew that they all knew that, of course. But even so, his eye hadn’t shaken like this for years, and fear like this was embarrassing. He was willing to admit to his own lack of skill with a weapon in his hands. But he refused to admit cowardice. As much as he wanted to collapse next to his younger sister and do the same as she – to shake and tear up just like his eye did – he wouldn’t allow himself to.

A hand on his shoulder startled him. The unexpectedness of the touch was enough for his eye to be shocked out of its tic, and Nik turned around to see a clear image of Kane passing him a sword and his hunting knife.

“Where did you…” Nik’s sentence faded away when he heard how hoarse and rocky his own voice was.

“When you and Rada left, I took some things and put them in our nook. I got a sword for you and your hunting knife. Your bow and arrows and knives were already here, Rada.”

“Did you get the box? The one on the mantlepiece?” Rada wasn’t facing them, but she was surprisingly snappy for someone who was currently weeping on the ground.

“It was gone.”

Rada was silent, and for a moment the only sound was of the flames of their home burning and the shuffling of leather and fabric as Nik shoved weaponry onto his belt. It was a process made significantly more difficult with his own shaking hands and lack of attaching weapons to himself.

Nik took this moment nevertheless to breathe and clear his head. He closed his eyes and emptied the tenseness from his shoulders. When he opened them, Rada was standing, having slung her bow over her shoulder and hidden her throwing knives amongst the folds of her dress. She was clutching the tree with one hand. She looked almost deranged. Nik knew this appearance better as ‘Rada grieving’. Kane, meanwhile, was staring blankly at the embers of the house, mouth slightly open in barely contained shock like a fish. It was obvious that he thought they couldn’t see him.

Nik cleared his throat. “We have to leave Tarrin. Now.”

“But the house…”

“Forget…forget the house. Leander’s men know we weren’t in the house when they lit it up. They’ll be looking for us.”

“Why would they be looking for _us_?”

“Because Leander knows who we are, Rada. And now that he knows, he’ll do anything to destroy us.”

***

North of Tarrin, twelve king’s men, a prisoner, and a prince and his most loyal follower followed the main road on horseback. The prisoner was sat with one of the king’s men while the prince rode with his follower at the front of the escort.

Leander waved to the king’s man who held Amarandos, and the king’s man kicked his horse to trot alongside the prince.

“When I was a boy I heard stories of you.” Leander began. He paused to consider his captive with a raised eyebrow before continuing. “You fought alongside my uncle, grew up alongside him too. Even my father called you the greatest swordsman Priyana ever saw, bar Mierche. But we always knew you ran away when my father took the throne. Ran away and disappeared.” Leander looked steadily on, unaffectedly watching the road ahead. “And then you were gone. We knew you were in hiding, of course. But, I suppose surprisingly, you didn’t cause any problems. Besides, there are things my uncle never even told my father. You might know some of the most vital secrets of the kingdom. Not to mention your skill as a swordsman, at least how my father remembers it, could prove valuable an asset.”

Amarandos was silent, and his head remained bowed. He did not look at the prince, and his only movement was to twitch a finger to shoo away a fly that had landed on his hand.

“Finding you in some tiny farm village in the Soul State was a surprise, even for me. And to find not only the greatest swordsman Priyana ever saw, but to have the son and daughter of my aunt and uncle with him as well? It was certainly a stroke of luck. I mean, even I believed more or less that Nikolai had been thrown into the moat with his parents and his sister. But there they were, dressed in peasant clothes, acting like the filth they were once supposed to rule. How strange.”

Amarandos continued his silence. The sounds of horse hooves clopping along the dust path filled the air.

“No answer, hmm? A shame. I was hoping you’d tell me how you so thoroughly hid the son and daughter of the former king and queen of Priyana for fifteen years. Though I’m sure you’ll tell me eventually. See, we’re heading to Nahvsenn currently. Soul City, as the peasantry here call it. I’ll have plenty more resources to call upon there. I hear the torturer at the prison has never had a victim not submit the truth. You may be special to the myths of our history, Amarandos. But by what I’ve seen, you’re just a soft old man who got kicked in the knees so he could let a bunch of kids get away for a few days longer.”

“Just a few days longer, you think?” Amarandos finally spoke. His voice was nonchalant and casual, as if he was holding a conversation about the weather rather than about the future of the two former heirs to the Priyani throne.

“Your fallen heirs will last no longer than a few days after I reach a town with a hawker. My plan to capture those two will unfurl from then.”

“A major town is our best bet around this kind of countryside. The closest one is Ahrie. We should reach there in three days,” Elwen said, breaking their calm quiet manner they held from atop her horse, which they rode next to Leander’s.

“Three days. Three days, and I’ll be certain there will be no threat to my claim to the throne. My advice to you, Amarandos, is to spend our time on the road considering what you’ll say to me when you learn I’ve destroyed your trio of treason.”

“Why should I consider what I’ll never have to say, Leander?”

“ _Prince_ Leander.”

“You have always been the nephew of the king to me. Never the prince.”

“I’ll give you no other choice. With my uncle’s children dead, I will be the only heir left.”

“Your father and this kingdom, to their knowledge, only knows _you_ as an heir. This problem you wish to solve doesn’t exist.”

“It doesn’t exist, _yet_. Word spreads quickly, and that girl is the spitting image of that island woman my uncle married. Someone will recognise the likeness if she keeps wandering around the country. She already looks strange enough in Soul State.”

“There are many Lower Islanders all over Priyana.”

“But not many blonde ones. To my understanding, there are only a few island families with blonde hair. And the only one we managed to get into Priyana before the islanders shut us off was my uncle’s island woman.”

“Don’t forget that your cousin is also her father’s daughter. Her father, who is an Inuryan through and through. _And_ whose children are the real heirs.”

“You make me laugh, Amarandos,” Leander said, not laughing. “So hopeful. It seems being a country blacksmith has softened the realism out of you. That girl will draw rumours and small-town talk wherever she goes. All I have to do is wait. I’ll find her. And with her will be her brother.”

“Your confidence is certainly unique.”

“Confidence is the way to victory and to power.”

“Yet in truth you have none. You’re telling me all this because you have to convince not only me but yourself that your plan will work.”

Leander hesitated, but continued speaking after only a momentarily lapse. “That’s false. You were famed for your sword, not your ability to read thoughts, Amarandos. Keep your talents to those of a disgraced former King’s Guard.” With that, Leander waved the king’s man away, and parted ways from his prisoner.

***

Pitmerden was a logging settlement that Ama had taken Kane, Nik, and Rada to a few times each year to deliver tools. It was far enough off the main road that Kane could agree with Nik that it was safe enough to stop at for the night.

They sat themselves down at a table in the small inn. Kane could see that Nik and Rada were both still shaken. Nik had been repeating breathing exercises and whispering calming phrases under his breath the entire journey, and Rada was staring intently at the table, barely blinking, such as she had been doing since Nik had pulled them away from Tarrin.

Kane was losing his mind. Probably more than both Nik and Rada. He was just much better at hiding it. Pressing it down until he was numb.

Finally, Nik took a huge breath in and out, and spoke. “We need to figure out what our plan is. Ama is gone. We have to figure out what to do with Ama gone.” Nik sounded certain, but the trembling in his fingers betrayed the truth.

“My duty is to keep you and Rada safe.” Kane said.

“Yes. Yes, it is. But Ama – Ama has always…”

“He isn’t here now, Nik! It’s just the three of us, gods damn us! Sort that clever brain of yours out and tell us what to do!” Rada’s entire body was strung tighter than the string of her bow.

“I can’t! I’ve never – the situation is totally different, I…”

The three sat in strained silence.

“We knew this day would come,” Rada said eventually.

“But Ama said he’d be there when it happened.” Nik’s voice was faint.

“Well, things have turned out different.”

“Very different,” Kane input helpfully. “Nik, you’re the one who’s supposed to take the throne back. We knew one day we would leave Tarrin for your home. Maybe…maybe it’s fate on fast forward.”

Nik squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists.

“You’re right. You’re right, Kane. We have to…we have to go to Inurya City. But first…” Nik opened his eyes and spoke to Kane determinedly. “We’re rescuing Ama first.”

***

The prince and his escort had stopped in a small clearing and set up camp around a makeshift fireplace. His prisoner had been tied against a tree at the edge of the clearing with nothing more than a spiderweb and a burly king’s man guarding him for company. The men ate around the fire, and after many hours, Leander wandered over to his captive. He held a tin cup of tea in his hands. A fur cape was drawn around his shoulders to keep the cold at bay. The final vestiges of winter were still clinging to the spring nights that year. Ama had no cape nor coat and his armour had been stripped. In the depths of the Soul State’s forest, the low temperature bit at his fingers and toes and made his cheeks turn red with the drops of freezing cold water that fell to his face as the snow melted ever so slowly from the leaves of the tree above.

“Do you feel like telling me any of the dead king’s secrets yet? We’re now just two days away from Ahrie. The lifespan of those children is ticking away _ever_ so quickly.”

“Not particularly. I trust them to survive whatever blunder you choose to throw their way.”

“Blunder? Oh, no. The method I have in mind is just like the torturer I’ve promised you – another one of Priyana’s finest. He’s never failed us.”

“Not yet, he hasn’t. The boy I brought with me upon our first meeting is as talented as I was when I was the King’s Guard. Perhaps even more. I would choose no other to succeed me.”

“I’m sure he feels honoured to take up the mantle of a King’s Guard who kidnapped two royal children and fled from his post when his king needed him most. You seem to forget your honour is fallen, Amarandos.”

“Your understanding of your own family’s history on the day of Olbert’s usurpation is very thin, Leander. Has he not taught you anything?”

“ _Prince Lean –_ my father has taught me enough.”

“Not the way I see it.”

“The way you see it doesn’t matter. History is simply what has passed. What matters is what I can do now to better my future.”

“Is that what your father taught you?”

“Yes.”

“A bastardisation of his own brother’s motto. The motto I lived by. Perhaps we are not so different, then, Leander. I, too, have not much concern for history. My heart has always been aligned only to my loyalty to King Stivann and Queen Edelyra.”

 Leander smiled wickedly, as if he knew he had hit a sour spot, and sipped his tea. “See, that’s your issue, Amarandos. You allowed your heart to become intertwined with your duty. You think so similarly to me, you say? You could be by my father’s side right now, still the King’s Guard. You could have –”

“I swore a vow to protect King Stivann and his wife and heirs. Not his younger brother. Nor his nephew. My vow was never to your father.”

“My father would have allowed you to retake your vow. You threw away your chance at freedom before you even reached the age of thirty, just to honour a promise you made to a corpse in the crypts under the palace. The legends don’t do your pathetic nature justice.”

“You have a quite a few feelings to share for someone who told me just moments ago that it’s best to leave your heart out of your duty.”

“You have quite an air of audacity to believe that you have any form of capability to read people.” Leander finished his tea and threw the tin to the ground, where Elwen appeared from seemingly nowhere to pick it up and carry it back to the centre of the camp. “Enjoy your night, Amarandos. Remember – two days.” With that, he turned and left, closing himself in his tent and leaving his prisoner once again with only a king’s man for company.


	3. Stosko

A soft bed. The faint smell of the last embers in the fireplace fading out as night transitioned to morning. Sunlight streaming gently through the window, past the thin curtains. Quiet, muffled talking from downstairs.

_Downstairs?_

Nik groaned and sat up, rubbing the grunge out of his eyes as sleep fell away to be replaced by the crushing weight of the events of the previous day. Kane was sitting on a stool behind the door, sword balanced on its tip on the floor. Nik nodded at him.

“Morning.”

“Morning.”

Nik glanced to the bed across from him, where Rada lay, curled into herself and a frowned etched between her eyes. She was still deep asleep. He swung his feet off the bed and pulled his clothes and boots over his underclothes and socks, then shook his sister awake.

“Wha…? Oh.” Rada turned away from Nik. “Five more minutes…”

“Don’t you want breakfast?”

Rada grumbled awake. She shooed the two boys out of the room, and they waited outside as she got dressed. She emerged several minutes later combing her fingers through her hair in an unsuccessful attempt at tidying her shock of curls.

“Let’s go, then.” She pushed past the boys and descended the stairs two at a time. Nik followed her, hearing Kane lock the door behind them. The Pitmerden Inn wasn’t the fanciest of establishments, but it hadn’t gotten them assassinated by Leander’s men overnight. Spending the last twelve hours in a constant state of suspicion had Nik quickly learning to lower his expectations. At this point the Inn had provided the safest, most comfortable stay Nik had in his life.

Breakfast was as luxurious as the tiny logging settlement could provide. Their fellow guests were almost all travelling labourers seeking work. The three crowded into the little dining room and shovelled flavourless porridge into their mouths, grimacing at the entire experience.

“Y’know, Ama couldn’t cook, but it was at least better than _this_.” Rada let a suspicious lump drop from her spoon into her bowl.

“We’ll get him back.”

“Sure.” Rada sifted around the lump until she found a more edible-looking pile of soggy oats.

“We have to figure out where that prince is taking him. Priyana’s huge, and there are plenty of places to go from Tarrin.”

“Well, we can exclude the south, since Jearn said he came from there. And he left towards the north,” Kane offered.

“He could be trying to cover his tracks.”

“No way. He’s too full of himself. He’d face any trackers head-on,” Rada said to Nik’s theorising, squinting at the wobbling substance on her spoon.

“That’s true.” Nik latched his fingers together and rested his head on them. “We can assume he’ll take the main road like all the visitors to Soul State do.”

“So he’s travelling north on the main road. Great! That _really_ narrows it down.”

“At least we have a _direction_ now, Rada.” Rada mumbled something unintelligible. “Anyway, I need a map. I’m bad at remembering unfamiliar geography. With a map I can figure where he might be heading.”

“Nobody sells maps around here, if I remember right,” Kane said.

Nik sighed. “We’ll have to head to the next town over. Where is that?”

“I–”

“You heard _what_? Say it again, Merd, tell us all!”

The three’s attention snapped to the boisterous guest at the other side of the room, who was wheezing with laughter.

“See, I just got here from Stosko, just north from here,” the loud guest’s companion – Merd, apparently, said. “Word there is this morning some velvet-clad kid with a whole army of king’s men came through. Made a right fool of himself trying to bully old Helga into giving him directions.”

“Posh little twig trying to intimidate _Helga?!_ Ha!”

The room burst into laughter. Nik’s eyes widened.

“Looks like we’re going to Stosko.”

***

Tarrin was a small town. It was only a few miles following the main road north before the path was enshrouded back in the thick forest that the Soul State was known for. On this road, a young prince with his right-hand riding at his side and his escort of twelve king’s men and one prisoner rode. He was unfamiliar with the Soul State, and his journey had meant to have started at Nahvsenn. However, at the bequest of his father, he had instead detoured south to Port Nikolai instead of west to Nahvsenn only a day after leaving his home in Inurya City. Upon finalising the business his father had in Port Nikolai, he had taken a boat to Port Lerras, where he had finally begun making his way back north-east to Nahvsenn through the main road across the Soul State.

The roads of the Soul State weren’t particularly well-known for crime, but there were patches that any local would avoid. The roads south of Tarrin, the centre town of three main roads heading south, west, and north respectively, were relatively peaceful. However, the stretch north was considerably wrought with bandits eager to steal from travelling merchants going to Nahvsenn and Riverbridge with newly collected wares from the goldmining settlements in the west. There were alternate paths – hidden and wilder, but safer – known to locals who would impart this knowledge onto any newcomer merchants. But the prince felt he had no use for locals what with the blood that ran through his veins, and instead travelled along a wide dust road bordered on both sides by ancient forest.

The trees were laden with bandits on their branches.

Word had travelled quickly from Stosko, and the mention of velvet was a sure sign of a good haul. The king’s men were a risk, most definitely – a risk far more than the usual hired swords or foot soldiers the bandits were accustomed to raiding. However, with their hastily-put-together party of forty, they felt they had a sure shot.

The rumours were revealed to be true a few hours into their perch, when the unmistakeable party of fifteen on horseback dressed in clothes and armour summarily recognisable as out of character for this region of the country walked past. With a quick signal, the bandits jumped, and their ambush began.

***

Stosko was a bit more interesting of a town than Pitmerden. A step up. A tiny, _tiny_ step.

It was, at its very least, an upgrade from one inn and a few rows of wooden huts. It had the luxury of an inn, _four_ stores, and several blocks of wooden cottages.

In short, it was very boring.

To Nik, it was, at present, perhaps the most exciting place in the country.

He could remember his own father. The memories of him he retained were from when he was five years old, of a strong grip on his shoulders and a gravelly voice reading him the history of their family every night before bed.

They were faint now, though thinking of them still hurt. Ama had since taken up the mantle of his father. Nik couldn’t think of Ama as a father, not when the memories of his own were so precious, but he respected him as one. Ama had raised him and Rada, had pulled them away from the castle and saved their lives as it all burned down around them. He was young, but the memories haunted him. Often he still woke up with the hot licks of fire stinging his arms and the strong scent of blood lingering in the air as Ama scooped little Rada up in his arms, grabbed Nik’s hand, and they ran past the bodies of his father’s fallen men, quietly escaping from the eyes of his uncle and far into the countryside.

Ama wasn’t Nik’s father, but he had saved his and Rada’s life. He had raised them and he had taught Nik how to be a king from a blacksmith’s cottage in a rural country town in the Soul State.

One of those lessons was to honour favours and debts. Nik was eternally indebted to Ama.

Underlying the nobler intentions of rescuing Ama, however, was a certain reluctance Nik couldn’t deny. Kane was right – this was fate on fast forward. Nik wasn’t ready for it, though, he knew. Taking on the country was something he was ultimately unwilling to do. He wasn’t fond of responsibility and leadership. He enjoyed strategizing and thinking, but the idea of ruling people was utterly unappealing. What was even worse was that this wasn’t even the first step – the first step was to somehow retake the throne from his uncle. His uncle, who had murdered his father – the father who Nik remembered as strong and clever. This was what he was up against. And he was supposed to unite a rebellion, to take back what was his, to charge in with his pathetic fighting skills and his mere seventeen years’ experience of being alive?

Rescuing Ama meant that they could go back into hiding and he could wait on his destiny a little longer. That was what Ama would do. He had always said that Nik wasn’t finished training yet, that he wasn’t ready. All he had to do was get Ama back and things would go back to normal.

“Eh, I ain’t seen _nothin’_. Was ol’ Jelm who told me ‘bout it.”

“And where can I find him?”

“Eh…‘e works down on the big corn farm.”

“Where’s that?”

“Eh?! Big corn farm. We grows two things round here – potatoes and corns. Look for stalks.”

“Right. Thanks.” Nik turned away from the barkeep to Kane and Rada and rubbed at his temples. He sighed in frustration. “Barkeeper only _heard_ about Leander’s posse passing through. He says I need to find Jelm at the big corn farm. Oh, and I still need a map.”

“How about you question Jelm, and Kane and I will do some shopping together, huh?”

Nik raised his eyebrow. “Really?”

“ _What do you mean, ‘really’?_ Geez, Nik. Look, you need a map, we _all_ need supplies since we can’t just stay at inns all the time. You’re clearly busy with the big corn farm or whatever. We’ll meet you at the town square when we’re done. Come on, Kane, let’s go.” Rada hooked Kane’s elbow and dragged him out the door, leaving Nik standing in front of the barkeeper, who felt a need to comment, “Young love, eh?”

“This has been going on since she first laid eyes on him when she was seven. It’s totally one-sided,” Nik muttered. The barkeeper didn’t respond. Realising he wasn’t being listened to anymore, Nik trudged out of the bar and into the streets, heading towards the wide stretches of hilly farmland outside town.

***

The situation, to be honest, was dire. But gods damn it, if she was going to be killed by that skinny pale prince sometime soon, she was going to enjoy her time with Kane. Fate on fast forward was what he had said…so it was time, perhaps, to woo him on fast forward.

Wandering around the stacks of jars on a supply run wasn’t the most romantic setting, but she could try.

“So…I haven’t really talked to you lately.”

“You talked to me and Nik just before.”

“No, like…” Rada groaned internally. “Like, alone, one-on-one. Just you and me.”

“Right. Yeah.”

Awkward silence ensued. Well, it seemed awkward on Rada’s end, but Kane seemed perfectly fine. As always when she was attempting to put a romantic edge on their relationship. She resisted the urge to shake him by the shoulders and scream, “I have a crush on you!”, and instead plastered a forced smile on her face and tried again.

“It’s been a –”

“Do you like pickled cucumbers? I do.”

“No. Put them back.” Kane pushed the jar back onto its shelf, and Rada almost jumped for joy as she dived into the conversational opportunity presented to her. “I do like candlelit dinners though. With a three-course meal, and lots of small talk.”

“That’s totally out of the question. It’s risky us even being in a major town with the prince looking for us, let alone the three of us spending hours in one place just eating. Besides, we don’t have the money.”

“I also like picnics!” Rada tried.

“We have to find Ama before we go about relaxing.”

Rada face-palmed.

“Are you alright, princess!?”

“Yes, I’m fine. It’s fine! Let’s buy this and find a map.”

By the time their supplies were packed into Kane’s bag and the map of Priyana rolled up and shoved in as well, the sun was well on its way to being set. Inside the buildings of Stosko, people lighting candles and lamps were turning the windows into glowing mosaic tiles. The streets were emptying, people going home or ducking inside the pub for a drink.

There was something odd. Rada could sense it. Something about the way the streets were just a tad _too_ quiet, _too_ empty.

She shook her head. She had been on edge for days now. She was probably overreacting.

“Rada!”

Rada found herself knocked to the ground as Kane pushed her out of the way. His bag was on the ground, and his sword drawn against three burly thugs who held their sack of coins.

***

Ol’ Jelm was surprisingly easy to find, probably due to him being the only person over fifty physically working the farms instead of sitting under a shade and ordering the boys around Nik’s age around the field complaining about joint pain.

“Didn’t see it myself, ’m afraid. Was the boys in the cowshed who told me about it.”

“Where’s the cowshed?”

Jelm pointed at the roof that was just visible over the tall cornstalks. “Just there, son.”

“Thanks.”

The cowshed was humid and it stunk. Nik wrinkled his nose and stepped delicately over the hay towards a group of boys sitting on haystacks, talking avidly amongst themselves.

“Excuse me? Yeah. Hey.”

“Hey. You the new kid here?”

“No. I’m just here to ask a few questions.”

“Alright. Though, if you’re looking for a job…”

“I’m not.”

“Whatever suits you.”

Nik coughed at a particularly foul-smelling whiff of the air inside the shed. “Yeah, it does suit me…Anyway, Jelm said you told him about a fancy guy with some king’s men that came through Stosko this morning.”

“Oh, yeah! You’re talking ‘bout the rumour, right?”

“…Rumour?”

“Yeah. Been spreading all over since dawn.”

“So…you didn’t actually see anything?”

“Nah. Just heard it from the barber while we were having morning brew a few hours ago.”

Nik sighed. “Where’s the barber?”

“Across from the burned down house in the centre of town.”

“Gotta get around to fixing that sometime,” one of the boys commented.

“Yeah,” the other four assented.

Nik left the shed, emerging into fresh air, and walked to the barber…

Who hadn’t seen anything either. Who directed him to the tailor, who directed him to a suspicious-looking sword-for-hire loitering in a dark alley, who directed him to a teacher…

***

Rada struggled to her feet. Three burly thieves had their money in hand and sharp knives amongst themselves. Kane was stood in front of her, sword held in a protective stance.

“Give us our money back.”

The thugs jeered at Kane. “Sword boy wants his money back!”

Rada saw Kane’s grip on the hilt of his sword tighten. Rada’s hands flew to where her dagger was hidden in the folds of her skirt, but the prick of a cold steel blade at her throat paused her in her tracks.

“Just be quiet, lovely.” Her captor pulled her back.

She opened her mouth to scream and reached up to struggle, but the sting as the knife cut ever so slightly into her neck stopped her.

Kane leapt into action, disarming and easily knocking two of the knife-wielding thugs to the ground. Rada felt her captor’s slimy grip on her tighten.

Moving on, Kane slashed skilfully at the thug with their money. The thug sidestepped, but his arm was grazed by Kane’s quick movements. Kane moved forward once again, and in an instant had the thug unarmed and in his reach. He grabbed the thug by the shoulder, wrestling him into position against the wall of a building. Rada saw his eyes flicker to hers. His brow furrowed in concern as he noticed her captive state. He turned back to the thug who he was holding against the building.

“Give us our money back. And let her go.”

The thug smirked, and in a flash of movement of his hand to Kane’s wrist, he forced Kane’s sword to clatter out of his reliable grip and far away onto the road behind. With a press of his fingers to Kane’s abdomen, Kane was abruptly flying backwards as if being pulled by – no, _pushed_ by some mysterious force from the thug’s hands. As Kane flew, Rada noticed the air where the thug was quiver, and their bag of goods seemed to deflate.

Kane rolled roughly as he landed. As he clambered to his feet, Rada could see the damage in his breathing. He was gasping for air and clutching at his stomach.

***

The reaction time and skills of king’s men were honed to precision. They were the most talented of soldiers and guards in Priyana, picked from the cream of the crop for tasks of supreme importance. Guarding the crown prince of Priyana was a top task.

Within five minutes, most of the forty bandits lay dead on the roadside.

A fierce redhead stayed close to the prince, their talent transforming the reach of their shortsword drastically. With practiced swings and stabs, their opponents seemed to fly back as if propelled by an unseen force from them. But as the fight drew to a close, they failed to notice the leader of the bandits jump from behind a slayed king’s man to the prince.

It was only as the Elwen turned around that they saw the flash of Leander’s blade glitter through the air, neatly cutting down the bandit leader.

Elwen rushed to his side. “Your highness, I apologise, I should have been warier…”

Leander pushed the body of the bandit away to lie next to the dead king’s man. “Yes, you should have.” He turned to his remaining men, which numbered nine, Elwen, and his prisoner. “Push the bodies to the roadside.” His men started moving around. Leander pushed his boot into the face of the leader he had just slain and gestured to one of the long branches of the ancient forest that the bandits had ambushed them from, which stretched over and across the road. “Tie this one to that branch up there. Mark him with the Royal Seal.”

“He isn’t alive, though, your highness,” one of the king’s men objected.

“My rule will be gentler than my fathers. Leaving my mark burned onto the skin of the living will be reserved for special cases.”

“Understood.”

Leander wandered back to the horse where his prisoner sat, quietly humming a tune. When he saw Leander, the prisoner raised one eyebrow and spoke.

“I see your father has brought back a practice which your family abandoned a hundred years ago.”

“It’s important to take credit for your work. And in this case, it helps keep the peasantry where they belong.”

“And where would that be?”

“In line. Scared of my family.”

“Have you ever considered the benefits of making friends with the people you rule?”

“There are none, Amarandos. I told you, you aren’t the thinking type. Don’t pretend you could ever comprehend what ruling a populace is like.” A stray thought seemed to amuse Leander, and he broke into a grin. “Ha ha! Looks like you aren’t even the fighting type anymore. In the old days you would have slid from that horseback and escaped into the forest, tied wrists be damned. Now look at you. Just sitting still while an opportunity slips through your fingers.”

“Does the concept of patience have any meaning to you, Leander?”

“ _Prince_ Leander.”

***

The thug laughed as Kane struggled to regain his breath. “No can do, sword boy. You’re money’s ours now.” He laughed again, but in that moment Rada saw the Kane she knew return, along with his _very attractive_ fighting skills. With a glimpse behind him, he regarded where his sword was. And within an instant, he was back in the fight, throwing punches, kneeing key body points, and dodging the thug’s hands. The sight of Kane fighting to defend her, even against this thug’s upper hand with his mysterious power, made her lightheaded. She felt the blood rush to her cheeks. She sighed, head tilting to one side.

It was because of this that she realised there was no longer a knife at her throat, that the other thug had left her and was now trying to sneak behind Kane. However, with a single step Kane managed to dodge a swipe from the money-holding thug and quickly take out the other thug with a neat punch to the stomach. With that, he returned quickly to the first thug. He knocked him to the ground, leaving him moaning in agony. Kane retrieved their money, and returned to Rada.

“Are you alright?”

“Oh yes. Thank you, Kane. You’re my _saviour…_ ” Rada leaned into Kane. Kane simply petted her head twice, seemingly subconsciously, and moved away from her to retrieve his sword.

“It’s my job, princess.”

Rada scowled. “Yes, but you protected _me_ right now.”

Kane stared at her blankly. “Huh?”

“Look, you – you know what? Never mind. Let’s just grab that bag and meet back up with Nik.” Rada turned away and headed back down the street to the tavern.

“Wait.”

“What?”

“Look inside the bag.”

Rada turned back and peered inside the canvas bag. Her jaw dropped.

***

Nik had lost track of how many doors he had knocked on. The sun was setting, the boys from the cowshed had yelled to him on their walk home half an hour ago. He could barely remember what his goal was anymore. What he did remember, though, was the vow he had made about two hours into this wild goose chase that he would never try to track down the source of a rumour ever again.

This door was the one of a young woman named Argeia. He wearily rapped his hand against it and tapped his toe as he waited impatiently for the inevitable.

Eventually, the door swung open to reveal a pretty girl a tad older than Nik, an apron with a drying tomato seed stain on it wrapped atop her simple dress.

“Hi. Did you see an ugly pale guy in royal dress with a prisoner, a short redhead, and a group of guards? Let me guess, you just heard it from someone else, right? Just tell me who told you and I’ll go. This has to end somewhere, I suppose.”

“I didn’t hear it.”

“Of course you – what?”

“I didn’t hear it. _I_ was the one who saw it.”

Nik mouthed around empty air like a fish out of water for a moment, before regaining his sense of composure.

“Really?”

The girl laughed gently. “Really.”

“So…what did you see?”

She shrugged and wiped her hands on her apron. “Exactly what you said. Kid about your age head-to-toe in velvet and fancy armour rode through here with sixteen king’s men and some old guy with his hands bound.”

“He’s not that old,” Nik muttered. “When did you see them?”

“Around daybreak.” At Nik’s inquisitive stare, she explained. “I’m a washerwoman. I start collecting laundry early in the day.”

“Right, right. Which way were they headed?”

“Are you trying to track them down?”

“No. Yes. Maybe.”

Argeia leaned out of the doorframe and rummaged around in a set of drawers in her hallway near the door until she produced a map of Priyana. She indicated to a large star in the lower west region of Soul State. “They’ll be going to Nahvsenn. There’s a direct line back to Inurya from there.”

“Nahvsenn. Soul City.” Nik’s eyes widened. “Oh gods, this is bad.”

“All I can do is wish you good luck.” She rolled the map up and handed it to him. “And this.”

Nik took the map. “You aren’t going to rat me out to the next group of king’s men that comes through town, right?”

She laughed gently. “Nope.”

“Thanks. I owe you one.”

At this she, her light mood seemed to fall. “No.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll support anyone going up against the king.”

“I’m just getting someone back.”

“In that action you’re going against them. They took my brother for their own. Take the map, Nikolai. And my support.”

“Wait, how do you know –”

But he could barely open his mouth before he blinked, and in front of him was an empty lot with only a burned down house occupying it. He was left with nothing but a confusingly real memory in his mind and a map in his hands.

***

“What do you _mean_ we have no supplies?!”

“We _had_ them, they just got – well, look inside the bag, Nik, see for yourself!”

Nik peered inside the bag, and wrinkled his nose at the smoky, yet strange smell emanating from within. He squinted further, and made out –

“It’s all _ash._ What did you _do?!_ ”

“We got attacked. One of them had some…strange power. The bag was nearby. It seemed to be collateral damage of the blast intended for me.”

“What kind of power turns glass jars into ash, Nik? What’s going on?”

Nik was silent. He chewed his lip, mind reeling through everything he knew. Finally, something began to dawn on him.

“It’s Soul Energy.”

“It’s what?”

“You guys never went to the library in Tarrin, did you?”

 “I was training with Ama.”

“I had better things to do with my time.”

“Yeah, yeah, you like being dumb, Rada.” Nik could see Rada open her mouth to start an argument in her periphery, and he hastily continued on. “Anyway. It’s a technique that draws from the energy of human beings that was _supposedly_ gifted by the gods. There isn’t much written about it, it’s much more of a handed-down teaching, but of what I _have_ read…basically your being, your body, your…I don’t know, your spirit? It has an energy running through it. In some people it’s more present than others, and those people can train themselves to summon and use it. So what that thief used – it was that energy. And by the sounds of it, it was specifically _Soul_ Energy.”

“How do you know?”

“There’s uh. There’s different types. Like, um, the Dark Land is known for Shadow Energy, gifted by the god Mehmed. That one is hard to describe, uh…The Old Priyanis up in the Wind Settlement can channel their energy into the breezes. Soul Energy manifests from physical touch. Like I said, there isn’t much written about it, and the book I read was thin and old to say the very least.”

Kane looked furious. “Why didn’t Ama ever tell me about this? He was the King’s Guard, he would’ve known. I thought I knew all _he_ knew about fighting but now there’s this entire aspect he’s left me totally unprepared for.”

“Lower your voice! And I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him when we get him back.” Nik grimaced. “Oh, by the way, if my hunch is right, that’s going to be harder than we expected.”

“Why?”

Nik unfurled the map, and Kane and Rada leaned in as Nik gestured to a large star in the south-west. “I think he might be taking Ama to Nahvsenn.”

“As in Soul City? The capital of the Soul State?”

Nik slid his finger over a route marked from Nahvsenn. “That’s where the quickest route from Soul State to Inurya City is. He’s the prince, and he’s probably set to go back to the Palace. Besides…Nahvsenn has its Prison.”

“Well of course he’s taking Ama to a prison. He _is_ his captive.”

“Nahvsenn Prison, Rada, is one of the most secure prisons in Priyana.”

There was a moment of silence as Kane and Rada absorbed what Nik was implying.

Eventually, Rada interrupted the pause with a groan. “We’re going to Nahvsenn anyway, aren’t we?”

“Yes.”

“What if they aren’t going there? We’re just going out on a limb here,” Kane interjected.

“Then we keep looking. But at least now we have a destination. And we have a map. So I propose we head along this route,” Nik traced his finger along a series of towns and roads, “And get Ama back at Nahvsenn. Understood?”

“Understood.”

Rada sighed. “Sure.”


	4. Outlaws of Priyana

Ahrie was a bustling country town. As the centre-point of three long roads through the Soul State, it saw a wide range of traders, travellers, and troublemakers pass through its streets. It was an essential stop on any journey to Nahvsenn due to its third north-east-heading main road. It was a heavily-trodden route to Riverbridge, a town through which all travellers were required to traverse in order to enter the mountain-enshrouded city of Nahvsenn.

The group of king’s men, their prince, and his prisoner arrived at morning in Ahrie. Leander was fond of early mornings – it was quiet, and easier to survey the lay of the land. It was also the time which he was least likely to draw attention to himself. He had no shame nor lack of confidence, but he acknowledged the consequences of patrolling himself proudly through this rural region while he was adorned with royal armour and a team of king’s men.

Leander required the services of Ahrie now. He glanced around from atop his steed at the tall stone buildings, painted varying shades of fading yellows and reds. He summoned two of his men forward.

“Wake the soldiers stationed here. Tell them they are to spread the… _news_ of our two heirs. And you, find the hawker. Send a summons for Ronin. I’ll wait just north of town.”

The two king’s men set off in different directions. Leander continued north. As they emerged out of town about an hour later, he reached over and lightly pricked Amarandos’ sleeping form on the arm with his dagger.

“Wake up, fallen legend. It’s time for you to tell me those words you’ve been thinking about.”

***

Nik woke up earlier than Kane and his sister that morning. The usual fire-ridden nightmares had plagued his dreams, making his sleep patchy and thin. But it was the feeling of something terribly, terribly wrong – a queasiness in his gut that lurked long after he had woken up and sat leaned against the thin, scratchy pillows – that propelled him out of bed, into his clothes, and out to meet the cold morning air.

He wrapped his cape around him as a soft breeze sent a violent shiver down his spine. Under his coats and gloves, he felt his arms and hands prickle with goose bumps. He was unsure if they were entirely from the cold.

The streets were vacant at this time except for him. He wandered out onto the street, trying to clear the discomfort from his psyche. It was halfway down a dusty old alley that he noticed another occupant not five metres from him. Nik drew himself to the wall, watching as the person hammered something onto the wall at the end of the street, where it would be seen by passers-by on the main path ahead, and shuffled onto another wall further away. He waited another few seconds, before he darted out to look at what had been left.

It took a few seconds for the image to register in Nik’s mind, but when it did, he felt the queasiness from when he awoke rise into panic. He tore the poster from the wall and jogged back to the inn as quietly as he possibly could with his emotions threatening to trip him at every turn. He finally reached their room and burst through the door. He frantically shook Rada and Kane awake and began moving about the room, packing their belongings.

“What’s going on?”

Nik paused momentarily from where he was hastily trying to stuff a few mislaid arrows back into Rada’s quiver to shove the poster into Kane’s arms. “We’re leaving! Now!”

“Where–”

“Just get Rada up. We _have_ to –”

“Nik, I’m up! Can you relax? Geez.”

“We’re on _wanted posters_ all over Ahrie, Rada!”

“We’re _what?!”_ Rada examined the poster, which had been left haphazardly on the ground as Kane had started pulling his armour on and collecting their belongings. Her eyes widened. She grabbed the closest object near her – a small wooden box provided by the inn filled with pencils and parchment – and lobbed it at Nik’s head. “Turn around, the both of you! I have to get dressed.”

The two of them spun around and continued any necessary gathering backwards and blind. Eventually, Rada signalled they could turn back, and were met with Rada fully dressed and armed. She led them through the door, letting them hastily retrieve anything left in her wake. The three emerged into the morning light outside, and Rada spun around yet again, stopping them in their tracks abruptly.

“Where are we going _now_? Any plans, Nik?”

Nik grimaced. “I didn’t – look, we just need to…the forest! Yeah, we’ll use the forest. We’ll keep heading along to Nahvsenn, except – except…out of sight.”

Rada raised an eyebrow. “Like, not on a path? Through the woods?”

Nik began walking quickly again, letting the others fall into step behind him as he spoke. “We won’t stray too far from the path. But we definitely can’t stay in any towns. They’ll recognise us from the posters.”

“What if we need supplies? What if _we_ absolutely _need_ to go into town?”

“Kane isn’t on the posters. And if we need to go, well…I suppose we can think about it when we need to. For now, we have to get out of here.” As he walked, Nik could feel the sun’s warmth burning hotter onto his face as it rose, spreading light around and casting the posters and the mirrored features of his own face into the shine. The streets were empty, but he could feel a thousand eyes bearing down on him and Rada.

He wanted, suddenly, more than anything, that Ama were still with them.

***

Several miles away, a fortress guarded by a teeming force of soldiers and led by a hardened senior king’s man, sat at the juncture where the Mier River split in three. In broad daylight, many would theorise that an attack would be unwise. The soldiers in the fortress had the advantage not only of light and a highly secure stone protection, but also of the command of a highly respected king’s man who was known to have personal connections to King Olbert himself. It was through this command that it was known that even an attack at night would only grant minimal advantage to the attacker.

Dragoy was the king’s man’s name, and he was a tall and imposing warrior. He always seemed to look down with intimidating height to most he talked to – or rather, barked orders at. He had seen more wars than even the king himself, had been a hardened criminal before being taken into the army by Olbert when the now-king was a prince. The Mier River Fortress, under Dragoy’s command, was known as one of the most impenetrable, perfectly protected places in all of Soul State. Never had there been an escape by a prisoner, a wall broken, or anything stolen in his tenure here at the river.

It wasn’t a quiet job, either. The river was a well-travelled route, and was frequented not only by travellers and traders, but by river pirates, bandits, and, most threateningly, the occasional rebel group. All were thwarted easily by the fortress’s tall, strong walls, and Dragoy’s akin command. It was a good thing, too, for here was where a few of the country’s most confidential and important documents were hidden, the most important of which being a ledger of data on many of the minor leaders and political forces of the nation. It was a folder of parchment which he kept in his own office, where he would stay and guard it almost every hour of every day. It stayed in a chest kept firmly shut with an unpickable, unbreakable lock. Only Dragoy had the key. Only _Dragoy_ could ever open this box. And he was watching the room where it stayed, every day. It was only once every few days, for just a few minutes at a time, that he would journey out of the office to check on the lands he guarded and the soldiers under his command.

Currently, he could see the dark green line a few miles away where the thick forest of the Soul State began. This was the location of the preferred tactic by many an approaching enemy – to sneak through the leaves and the long grasses of the plains therein until they reached the walls. But Dragoy had a good eye, and instead stood at one of the ramparts and held a telescope to his eye to examine the tree-line, where he watched with comfortable expertise for the movement of an invader.

In the three seconds he inspected the edge of the plain, a dark figure, who had been clinging to the wall just below his feet, seemed to glide along the sheer wall with the practised fluency of a spider. The figure sidled to the windowsill of Dragoy’s office, where he toed open the window and slipped in, totally unnoticed, the first to breach the fortress’ walls in fourteen years.

Dragoy returned to his office not two minutes later to find nothing more than a windowsill slightly clearer of dust than it had been that morning, and three pages of the ledger missing.

***

“I do believe we haven’t fed you that much under our care, have we, legendary Amarandos. Elwen?”

“We fed him a few scraps this time two days ago, your Highness.”

“How fascinating. Perhaps I _have_ been too harsh on you. I find it thrilling that you haven’t simply fallen off that horse we strap you so loosely to and faded away on the roadside.”

“Would you even wish me dead? It seems…” Amarandos’ voice was croaky and quiet, and his face spasmed in pain as dehydration seared his vocal cords. “…that you enjoy talking to me.”

“I enjoy tormenting you,” Leander corrected, and took a swig from his water skin. “By the way, you’ll be happy to know that your trio of treason are now wanted criminals throughout Priyana. And if the desperate starving peasants of this country don’t turn them in for money they crave, then I’ve also sent for one of Priyana’s finest to track them down and destroy them.”

“I know they can –”

“You know _nothing_. I’ve seen the one I’ve summoned challenge my father’s own King’s Guard and defeat him. His talents will be unstoppable against those teenagers wandering around the country.”

“Are you not also a teenager wandering around the country, Leander?” Amarandos croaked. He was dirty and getting more haggard by the day, but still a sly smile creased his unshaven face into a smirk.

“I am no such –”

“Ronin has arrived, your Highness.”

Leander scowled, then moved to sit neatly on a rug facing the entrance of his tent. “Send him in.”

The king’s man exited the tent, and his presence was replaced a moment later with a short, thin figure dressed in black lightweight armour. On his thighs was a holster which held a dagger and a throwing knife on each upper leg, and on his back was a sword with a peculiar hilt. It was Amarandos, from his position at the corner near the entrance of the tent, who noticed the hilt’s design. It seemed as if the blade emerged seamlessly from a web of steel vines which wove together in a stunningly realistic, yet dazzling piece of art. Yet Amarandos also noticed that the hilt seemed as strong as any sturdy steel hilt he had ever crafted. The sword’s design seemed more decorative than Amarandos preferred to make and utilise for practical purposes, but Amarandos could also tell that the balance of the blade itself was expertly crafted, and as sharp as the one he had given up for Nikolai, Radomira, and Kane.

The longer Amarandos stared at it, the more his lifetime of blacksmithing and swordfighting came into question. The intricate patterns were far too complicated to be moulded, nor etched in by hand. It was as if nature itself had woven itself into this pattern. And then there was the blade, which, when cast into a ray of sunlight from the open tent flap, was revealed to be made of a metal with the faintest green vine patterns tracing through it like veins.

It was the most beautiful sword Amarandos had ever seen.

“Ronin. I have a job for you. I need you to trace down and attack a trio of traitors.” Leander handed him a rolled-up piece of parchment. “The faces of two of them are shown here. As usual, don’t let any soldiers know you’re working for the king.”

Ronin unrolled the poster and examined it briefly, before passing it back to Leander and waiting expectantly. There was a long pause.

“Well?” Leander snapped. Ronin was unshakeable. The silence continued, growing tenser and more uncomfortable by the second. Finally, Leander’s eyes widened as he seemed to have remembered something. “Right. Your deposit.” He reached over and pulled out a pouch of coins, which he gave to Ronin. With that, Ronin bowed and left the tent.

Amarandos laughed softly.

“What _now_ , traitor King’s Guard?”

“Seems to be an awful lot of teenagers chasing _my_ teenagers today.”

“Stop laughing and start praying,” Leander snapped. “Ronin is only eighteen, yet he’s a force that even our best cannot be reckoned with.”

“Kane is also eighteen.”

“Your Kane will stand no chance against Ronin. A country boy, against _Ronin?!_ Utterly preposterous.”

“Ronin seems to be little more than a sword-for-hire. Not a member of your army.”

“That doesn’t matter. How he lives his life is no concern to me. What’s important is that he could steal your beloved protégé’s beating heart from his chest and he wouldn’t even notice until his soul is being weighed for the afterlife. That talent is now being utilised against your three teenagers. So, Amarandos, I repeat. It’s time to say those words I told you to think about.”

Amarandos paused. He breathed deeply a few times.

At last, he spoke.

“If you want me to say any more, I’ll need a drink of water. I’m losing my voice, Leander.”

“Prince Leander. And don’t try to pull that with me. I find it immensely suspicious you haven’t escaped yet. I’ll risk nothing that may be in any plan of yours. So, tell me what you have to say about your trio being _mine_.”

Amarandos was silent. The prince glared at him, but to no avail. The legendary hero, unescaped from the prince’s clutches, had no words to give to him.

***

The day had not begun well. At least, though, it had begun _excitingly_.

The last five hours had been summed up by an endless slew of ancient trees; growing weakness as Kane’s missed breakfast and lack of sleep caught up with him; and a growing headache as the prince and princess he had sworn to protect passionately continued their screaming match with each other.

Ama had spent the last decade teaching him to respect the authority and birth supremacy of Nik and Rada. But this was really pulling Kane’s toe over that line of self-control. Spring had truly begun now, and to add onto the hunger and the tiredness, the thick forest blocked much of the breeze, meaning that the air was almost totally still in a horrifically dizzying way.

The arguments of the two in front of him had long since blurred into being only an ingredient in his irritation. It was, more or less, a state of constant frustration he was living in now.

He wasn’t sure exactly what had him turning around abruptly, hand flying to his dagger at his hip and eyes warily flicking around his surroundings. All he felt was some kind of sneaking suspicion, something that chimed in him that had him feel eyes on his back.

“Hey.”

The two royals paid him no mind. Kane tightened his grip on his dagger and gritted his teeth. “Hey!”

“What, Kane? Why don’t you tell Nik that we’ve passed that tree twice?”

“How about you tell _Rada_ that her sense of geography is even worse than mine, and that the leaves of the other tree were infected with a disease of the leaf that –”

“I – there’s someone watching us.”

“How do you know?” Rada eyed the surrounding forest and reached to pull her bow off her shoulder.

“I…I’m not sure. I just…I just felt like –”

“We can’t spend five minutes sitting here waiting for some non-existent enemy to attack us because your imagination conjured one up. We have to keep moving.”

“Well, we have to head this way now, because that tree –”

“Is totally different from the last one! Just shut up and…”

Kane pursed his lips. He took one last look around his surroundings, before turning back around and jogging back to his arguing companions.

As he turned around, he saw a flash of a shadow, a tad unnatural, move in the trees above him. He stopped immediately, drawing his sword.

He couldn’t see the shadow anymore. It seemed to have blended into the trees around. He whipped his head around, desperately trying to seek their assailant out.

“Nik! Rada!”

The arguing continued. They hadn’t heard him. “Hey! _Nik! Rada!”_

Still nothing. Kane readied himself into stance, and yelled, “ _Hey!_ Shut up, both of you! There’s something watching us!”

And then there was no noise but the rustling of the leaves in the wind high above them.

“Where is it, then, Kane?”

“It’s – it was –”

“You _felt_ its presence, did you? C’mon, man. We’re all hungry, and tired…but we’re deep enough in the forest that Leander’s men won’t know enough to figure out where we are just yet.”

“You don’t know that.” Kane squinted at where he last saw the shadow.

“Well, no, but it’s only been a few hours. Anyway, if we get attacked, then you can deal with that.”

“But I…”

“Let’s just go.”

Kane frowned, but sheathed his sword and carried on walking. He glanced back into the trees above him one last time, and swore he saw the dark flash of something move once more.

***

As the day drew on and the sun rose and fell, the trio moved past heated arguments into a state of tension. The exhaustion of all three had made them overly sensitive to each other’s flaws, but as the hours since their last meal ticked into the day mark, it sent them instead into a sense of shared silent treatment. Nobody had the energy to argue anymore.

Finally, as it became too difficult to see anymore, Nik suddenly sat down on a log and glared at nothing in particular.

“We’ll camp here. Rada, gather wood for a fire. Kane –”

“Oh, and you’ll do nothing but sit and give orders, Mister Heir-to-the-Throne? You can barely talk to the first girl you see, and never do you put in any kind of actual effort, but _you’re_ the one who’ll sit up on that throne when this is all said and done? What kind of ridiculous notion is that? _I’m_ the one who does stuff around here!”

“All we need is firewood, Radomira! Is it too much to ask? And if it weren’t for me, we would be sitting in jail waiting for Leander to take us to Nahvsenn Prison too. So _excuse_ me if I want to –”

“Who cares about what you – umph!”

“Rada!”

At Nik’s cry, Kane abruptly drew his sword to face Rada. He was confronted with a single attacker, who stood with his own sword readied behind the unconscious body of Rada. The enemy wasted no time, immediately lunging for his nearest opponent – Nik – in a flash. Nik drew his hunting knife, managing to block a quick attack to his chest, but the force of it knocked him backwards, tripping him over an exposed tree root and hitting his head on the ground. The impact left him unconscious beside Rada.

Kane prepared a move to go on the offensive, but his attacker was already in front of him. Kane adjusted back into a defensive stance, marvelling at the speed of his foe. The king’s man he had knocked down a few weeks ago in Tarrin came barely _close_ to this quickness. Not to mention, up closer now Kane could see the features of his opponent. It was a boy his age, with fairly short dark hair and green eyes that almost glowed with the thrill of the fight. The boy was pale, and the usually expected passion of battle was muted by the blank face he kept, and the trained, steady hand he had on his weapon, held closely against Kane’s.

The boy spun out of their cross, and Kane made an offensive lunge which was easily blocked by the boy.

No way was Kane going to let this guy win.

He grunted and pushed onwards once more. But it seemed every move he made beckoned into a back and forth, a give and take between the two of them. He was beginning to feel frustrated, and as he looked into his opponent’s eyes once more he could see that frustration reflected.

This fight was taking too long. He had to get to Rada and Nik still, had to gather up whatever belongings as quickly as he could and drag them somewhere away where he could treat any wounds they had. But they were getting nowhere. His muscles were beginning to burn. He had taken more than this, he would regularly take a longer strain during any training spar against Ama back in Tarrin. But today he hadn’t eaten in an entire twenty-four hours, and had been walking the forest on that empty stomach with nothing but arguments accompanying him. He was tired, hungry, and he had a headache. This was no time for a fight with the notions of impasse as this one had.

He gave a fierce lunge, sending his opponent stumbling back a little. However, he recovered quicker than Kane anticipated, and used the split second where Kane was reeling from the push he had made to charge Kane. Kane stepped backwards, forgetting his footwork in his hasty reaction, and tripped over a tree root. He caught himself on his elbows, feeling bruises pop on his back, and looked up to see a sword pointed at his throat and a boot on his chest.

He reached for his sword, but the warrior in black pressed down on his chest harder. Kane wheezed under the pressure, but the opponent seemed to release it just as soon as he had placed it.

Kane raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you supposed to kill me?”

His opponent blinked, green eyes seeming almost startled out of some kind of reverie. Abruptly, he whipped the sword away from Kane’s neck. Kane was confused, until he heard the soft _clang_ of one of Rada’s throwing knives hitting the foe’s steel forearm bracer, which he had raised to defend himself from the throw. Seeing the opportunity, Kane rolled out of reach and sprung back up, grabbing his sword and preparing to storm with new vigour.

Before either of them could react, the sounds of footsteps and chatting coming closer washed their way. The three of them froze as the steps of two guards, who had been patrolling the forest path nearby, approached, having heard the chaos of their fight.

“Hey! What’s going on over there?”

Rada looked like she was about to combust, but in a split second, she managed to pull herself to her feet and ready an arrow to fire towards their shadow-dressed enemy. But before she could do that, or Kane could utilise the momentary distraction to attack him, their foe leaped agilely back up into the trees. Within seconds he was gone.

Without wasting a moment, Kane sheathed his sword and grabbed Nik’s unconscious body. He dragged his body into the hollow of the tall fallen tree the prince had been sitting on. Rada crawled in next to him, and they held their breath as they listened to the sounds of two guards roaming their small clearing. The sounds of twigs and leaves crunching underfoot approached the log, and Rada whipped out one of her knives, eyes flicking around in alarm.

Kane pulled his own dagger out as noncommittal voices carried their way.

“You see this? Throwing knife.”

“Eh? Oh, yeah, for sure.”

“Might be bandits.”

“Might be. Only sounded like two people fightin’, though. Say it’s just some travellers got into an argument. We ain’t too far off the path. Might’ve had some kinda argument while they set up camp. It ain’t odd.”

There was a pause. At the end of the hollow, Kane watched as the legs of one of the soldiers moved as the soldier peered behind their log. Rada began to creep forward, but Kane pulled her back. Seconds later, the legs moved back into the clearing and the voices continued.

“You’re probably right. Not our problem. Anyways, you were talking ‘bout…?”

“The new pub in Riverbridge. Fine beer, and even finer bartender…” The voices began to fade away, and so did the footsteps. Kane waited until he couldn’t hear them at all, before he let Rada go. He pulled Nik out with him.

“Kane? Why are you dragging me?” Kane heard Nik mumble from behind him.

“You got knocked out. We had to hide.”

“Oh.” Nik rubbed at his eyes and shook his head, before getting to his feet. “We should probably find a better spot to make camp then.”

Next to him, Rada moaned, “Great. More walking through the forest.”

***

That night, Rada couldn’t sleep. She had been laying in her blankets for hours, but the events of the last few days kept swirling around her head, keeping her awake. Eventually they had found some food to eat, had caught a rabbit and roasted it over the fire. She was no longer hungry, but this unfortunately gave her enough energy to have her conscience trying to categorise and organise all the abrupt changes in her life.

Across from her, Kane sat on guard, sword propped up vertically and held in his two strong hands. It was his shift to keep watch as her and Nik slept. But sleep seemed like it wasn’t going to come anytime soon, so she sighed and moved out of her blankets to sit next to Kane. She pulled her cape around her. The fire was low, and it was quite cold.

“You should be sleeping.”

“Yeah, I know. Can’t, though.”

“Ah.”

Rada watched the silhouette of a branch of a tree above moving in the gentle night breeze. She exhaled, and her breath came out in pale fog. They both sat in silence for a while. Rada could sense something coming from Kane’s seated figure, a sense that he had been thinking hard about something for the last few hours.

“What’s wrong?”

Kane shifted a little. He set his sword down on his lap. “I lost that fight.”

Rada frowned. “No, you didn’t.”

“I did. If it hadn’t been for your knife and the guards scaring him off, we would all be dead. I failed my job.”

“Your job is to keep us alive and safe. You did that.”

“Mmm.” Kane still seemed frustrated.

“There’s something else on your mind, isn’t there?”

“Somewhat.”

Kane didn’t say anything else on the matter, and after a few minutes of silence Rada got the hint. As much as she ached for a chance to know Kane better, to grow closer to him, she could tell that now wasn’t the time. Instead, she let the quiet settle into a comfortable reverie among the two of them, until Kane felt ready to speak up once more. After all, Kane had always been the most muted amongst the three. She knew that talking wasn’t something he was especially comfortable with.

“You should engage in combat much more often. You clearly have a talent for long-range weaponry.”

Rada blushed at the compliment. “Thank you.”

“When we get Ama back, you should show him. He’ll be impressed for sure.”

The warm feeling she had gained from Kane’s compliment disappeared abruptly, leaving her with a heart full of a cold swirling eddy of complex emotions. “I wouldn’t be so sure about Ama being proud of my fighting skills. Goodnight, Kane.”

With that, she moved away and curled back up to sleep, trying to dispel the reminder that the Ama that Kane and her brother knew was not the Ama that she knew.


	5. Lady Luck

Rada just eaten the worst breakfast in her life. Well, not _eaten_ as such…rather she half-consumed it then immediately interrogated Nik on whether the substance he had concocted from random forest nuts that he claimed he had ‘read were edible in the almanac’ wasn’t a poison. It was worse than if she hadn’t had breakfast at all. Considering how little she had actually eaten, she _might_ _as_ _well_ have skipped breakfast anyway. It wouldn’t make any difference on how she was feeling now.

They were still making their way to Nahvsenn through the thick forest of the Soul State. They were fairly distant from the road, although Nik promised they were travelling somewhat alongside it. The ground was rough and strewn with tree roots and decaying matter and half-buried stones. It was rough going, and it was tempting to simply risk it and travel along the open path instead.  

In front of her Nik was rambling about the map and equations and constellations that apparently told him where they were. It was difficult to tell if Kane was actually listening to him or not. Rada drew her eyes back downwards again. She watched, bored, as her feet moved over moss and decaying leaves in a steady, rhythmic motion. She pinched her wrist as she felt her eyes close and the telling comfort of sleep begin to creep up on her. She glanced back up again, seeing the figures of her brother and Kane in front of her. She sighed and continued on.

The tediousness of this entire affair was getting to her. So when the drifting scent of something warm and delicious cooking came to her, it was a curiosity too good to miss.

“Wait.” Nik and Kane paused. They looked at her inquisitively. “Do you smell that?”

They frowned at her, before Nik’s eyes widened. “We must be near a town or a village. Although…my map doesn’t show anything, maybe it’s a newer settlement…” He unfurled the map abruptly, pulling it close to his face and making unintelligible mutterings as he scoured over it.

The sound of a loud, metallic clang, as if someone had dropped iron onto tile, rang through the air. Rada met Nik’s eyes, before the three hungry teenagers took off in the direction of the sound. It wasn’t long before they came upon a clearing, in the middle of which was a small, yet sturdy, hut. Outside of it, a hunched figure was shuffling around a wooden porch, lifting an iron pot back onto a shelf. As the three drew near, Rada saw it was an ancient woman, hair white as ash and skin wrinkly like a prune.

Rada’s mouth watered at the thought of prunes. Her hunger wasn’t helped by the fact that her suspicions had been correct – the smell of spices and warmth was even stronger from here.

Kane approached the old woman and helped her rearrange her toppled shelf of cauldrons, pots, and pans. She thanked him, and then noticed her other two visitors.

“Oh! Seems it’s a visiting day for old Ada!” She shuffled over to Rada and Nik and grinned at them. “Care for lunch? I just got done cooking.”

***

Leander and his entourage had moved on from Ahrie about two days ago. The town had served its purpose, and as much as the prince doubted Amarandos’ current abilities, he still felt that he’d best be on his way to Nahvsenn and to the city’s prison as quickly as possible. Carting around the man who he had witnessed as a young child easily defeat his own father in a fight was something he wished to be done with. Besides, the sooner he was in a major city and not sleeping in a tent anymore, the better. After that he could return to Inurya City to his father’s approval when he learned of Amarandos’ capture at his own son’s hands.

Leander felt a keen wave of yearning as he thought of his father’s approval. Capturing the former King’s Guard and destroying his own cousins, certifying his father’s and his own claim to the throne, would surely have a high chance of being the action that finally swept a proud nod of appreciation into his father’s eyes.

This quest was tantamount.

The prince now watched as his men moved around him, setting up camp for the night. They were getting close to Riverbridge now. A few days’ ride and they would be at the bustling town that served as the entryway into the mountain-enshrouded fortress of Nahvsenn. Leander had long since had enough of Soul State country towns. Inuryan rurality was one thing, but Soul State rurality? It was atrocious. Leander had seen enough forest to last him the rest of his life. At least the peasants in Inurya had the sense to learn what their royals looked like. All the peasants here had little to no clue who he was until he had told them. It was almost treasonous, in his eyes. His father, of course, _would_ see it as treason. But Leander intended to be a gentler ruler than his father, who was prone to bouts of minor cruelty.

Leander stepped inside his tent and lay himself down gingerly on the woven blankets on the floor. They had been riding all day, every day. It wasn’t as if he was unused to travelling…it was just that it was rare that he would have to leave Inurya Palace for this long. He had already been away from home for far too long, and he anticipated he would have at least a little over a week left before he finally arrived back in Inurya City.

“Your highness. Ronin is here.”

Leander peeked an eye open to see his Prince’s Guard, in all their five-foot-tall redhead glory, poking their head into his tent. He shifted into a sitting position and gestured for the hired sword to come forward. Ronin stepped in, the teenager standing at attention, the same unreadability as always in his eyes. The silence stretched on for a long time, before Leander sighed.

“Well? Speak.”

“I was…unable to complete your task.” Ronin’s voice was quiet. Leander could barely hear him. When the words registered, though, it was confusion and rage which threaded itself into his response.

“I hired you because you have a perfect rate of success. Never have you failed me, nor have you failed any of your other masters. So why is it you _choose to defy_ –” Leander cut himself off. He took a moment to compose himself, then tried again. “Well, I understand. Sometimes Lady Luck gets in our way at an inopportune time. But…” He dug through his pockets and retrieved a small sack of gold pieces. “This will not be yours until the job I demanded has been finished. This would keep you fed for a year. It would be in your best interests to comply with my request. Now leave.”

Leander watched as the sword-for-hire slipped out of the tent again wordlessly. He waited a moment, before shoving the bag of coins into his pocket again and laying back down on the blankets.

Lady Luck should lay her hands on his cause, and let him return home to a father who regarded him as an heir and not a brat.

***

“Drink! Drink the tea. And let me see the leaves when you are done.”

Rada raised one eyebrow. Lunch had been delicious – although at this point she was sure anything remotely edible would have her saying the same – but the situation had quickly turned south as the old hag had exposed exactly _why_ she seemed so lacking in regular visitors.

In the last half hour, Rada, her brother, and Kane had been subject to palm readings, they had chosen stones out of a pile which had apparently determined their fortune, and now they were being forced to drink tea.

“And what will this show you again?” Nik questioned, eyeing his cup warily.

“Your love life, dear.”

“Like, if my crush likes me back?” Rada asked.

“Possibly.”

Rada narrowed her eyes at the hag. She was fully aware of the posters brandishing their faces. Despite this woman’s remote habitat, it was still possible she might have seen a poster somewhere and was keen to collect the bounty. The tea could be poisoned. Or, worse, the hag could be the real deal and might tell her that Kane wasn’t into her.

“What do my leaves say?”

Rada’s eyes bulged as she whipped her head towards Kane, who was smiling politely and offering his empty cup to their host. The hag grinned eagerly as she leaned over to take the cup.

“What are you doing?” Nik whispered to Kane through gritted teeth.

Kane just shrugged. “It would be rude to refuse.”

“Are you – it could be –”

“Oh! How fascinating!”

“What is it?”

“It seems you have already encountered your soulmate, but do not yet understand what feeling lies beneath your newly-forming relationship.”

“Do you know _who_ they are?” Rada queried, eyes snapping to the hag. It almost sounded like that _could_ be her. Maybe? Was their relationship ‘newly-forming’?

“Yes, I do.”

“Who are they?”

“I shouldn’t say.”

“Ugh! I _knew_ this was all fake. You just say some generalised catch-all and call it magic, that’s the trick.”

“Fate _is_ something gods have a keen eye for, my dear.”

“And what? Are you a god or something?” Rada flashed a sceptical look her way. “Seems doubtful.”

“I have a direct line with the gods,” the hag snapped. Rada folded her arms and glared.

“Look, we’re sorry, we’re just all a little on edge. We were worried you might have –” Nik started, but he was cut off with a gentle laugh from the hag.

“Poisoned the tea? Yes, I figured. But poison didn’t occur to you when you were eating?”

“I…to be fair, I was quite hungry,” Nik mumbled.

“I can promise you I have poisoned nothing. Though words can be deceiving, and I understand your suspicion against me. Life is rather difficult on the run, is it not?”

“I – so you _do_ know about the bounty.”

“I do. But you see, my people have been treated unfairly by Priyana for centuries, so I am not under the greatest keenness to turn you in.  Besides, I sense a change in that treatment in the flows of fate…a change that points in major parts to you three. In the future you will hold Priyana to a different standard than your royal ancestors have. I empathise greatly with your situation.”

Nik frowned. “You know who we are?”

“Nik, it’s another general statement. Don’t be stupid. Anyway, sorry if you think I’m rude. I just don’t buy into this fortune teller thing. My brother is easy to lead on because he doesn’t know how conversation works.”

“Hey! I am not!”

“What do you mean by ‘your people’? You said Priyana has treated them cruelly for a long time.” Kane leaned forward onto his elbows.

“The people of the islands to the south.” This was all the old woman had to say on the matter. “It’s a topic you will learn first-hand of soon, Radomira.”

Rada stood up abruptly from her seat, knocking the table and sending the cups rocking unsteadily on their bases. “How do you know my real name?”

The old woman grinned slyly. “Gods know, my dear.”

Rada glared at her. “The gods told you, did they? Why don’t the gods tell me why I was born second-in-line when the first-in-line is an antisocial with his head buried in a book instead of in his own responsibility to become king?”

“Perhaps it was to –”

“No! You don’t understand a _thing_ about me, nor do you know anything about my future. I don’t care how you learned my name and who I really am, but I know for damn sure no _god_ nor old hag who lives in a hut in the forest is going to tell me what my role in life is!” Rada fumed silently for a few moments. She could feel the shocked stares coming from her brother and Kane. What was worse was the calm, unperturbed expression the old hag had affected. When the silence became unbearable, Rada moved again, stomping towards the door. “I’ll be at the edge of the clearing,” she said, before slamming the door shut behind her.

***

The shadows of the forest were easy to slip unnoticed through. Ronin was shadow itself when he chose to be.

He lay a hand gently on the branch of the tree he was crouched on. From his hand a soft green light began to glow, and emerald sparks threaded their way down the tree’s veins and into the soil.

A moment later, Ronin pulled his hand away from the tree. He had found his bag of gold pieces, resting near a cottage in a clearing.

***

Kane stretched his legs from atop the wooden crate he was sat upon. He yawned, blinking wearily, before shaking himself awake again and staring out into the shadows of the forest around the clearing. He could see Rada, having drifted to sleep long ago, in the spot she had chosen to occupy hours ago. She had been stubbornly unmoving for the rest of the day, watching grumpily as Kane and Nik moved around the cottage doing menial tasks for their aged host.

He glanced up at the sky. It was a full moon, and the clearing was quite bright. The stars peppered the sky like freckles. In the distance, an owl hooted softly from the forest. He looked back down, watching, eyes glazed, as he made patterns in the dirt with his foot. Ada had allowed the three to sleep in her cottage, however with Rada still doggedly sticking to the tree-line and Kane having his duties to guard _both_ Nik _and_ Rada, it was only Nik who had taken her up on the offer. He currently slept inside on a pile of blankets set up on the floor.

Usually, Kane would join them, sleeping with them and waking easily from disturbances, then getting up and standing guard from sunrise until the two awoke. However, he couldn’t leave Rada outside so vulnerable. He was also unsure about whether she would want his company – after all, it was he who had conceded with the old woman who Rada felt so strongly about. He didn’t want her to see this as him going against her, but he expected that if he were to approach her now he would make the situation worse. He had already sent Rada to the edge of the clearing, but at least he could see her from there. Antagonising her could send her running off into danger even worse.

“Everything is alright, I presume, dear?”

Kane eyed the silhouette of Rada’s resting form. “Mostly.”

“What are you thinking? I could tell from a mile away something is troubling you.”

He blinked. He turned to study Ada’s face. It was difficult to see her as having malicious intent, but he seceded its possibility. Nevertheless, he still strongly doubted it. He had great trust in his instinct for danger.

“Do you really have a connection with the gods? Honestly.”

“I do.”

“So you really do know…fate. Luck. That kind of stuff.”

“These things are not certain, but gods can sense their general forms. The fates and futures of you three have strong forms. They are already forming, quickly, and the margin for error in the prediction of their shapes is small.”

“So…” Kane squinted a little as he figured out what she meant. “Yes?”

“Mostly, yes.”

“Okay.” He fidgeted with the pommel of his sword for a moment, letting his fingers slide over the smooth amber piece inlaid into the iron. “Then, when you said I had already met my soulmate, that was highly likely...”

“True, yes.”

“My romantic soulmate?”

“Yes. What exactly do you intend –”

“And you really know who it is?”

_“Yes.”_

Kane stared at the amber pommel. It glowed faintly in the light of the full moon. “It’s just…what would they see in me? I barely even understand my own emotions. I don’t even…I don’t even know why I’m still guarding Nik and Rada. I have every opportunity to go live free, without being hunted down alongside them. But then I also swore to Ama I’d protect them. And I want to, but I don’t quite understand how my own…feelings fit into that. I have morals and beliefs, but I also follow Nik’s every order. And my morals haven’t crossed with Nik’s orders yet, but it’s the possibility that they will that keeps me up. When Ama was here, it felt more like brotherhood. But now he’s gone, his destiny, who he is, who _I_ am to him and Rada…it’s so much more obvious. And I don’t even know if I have a problem with _that!_ ”

“Your emotions and your being are tangled. I am not the one to untangle it – that must be you.”

“Will it ever be untangled?”

“Yes. And soon.” Ada joined him in looking up to the stars. “I am not your god, nor can I speak for that god. But I know that, before you retrieve Amarandos, you will encounter the god who will be the one to set into motion that untangling.”

“Right.” Kane stared blankly ahead again, having given up on decoding whatever metaphor-laden sentence the old woman had just offered him. “Do you have any hints for me? About who my soulmate is?”

“I suppose I could tell you one…”

“Go ahead.”

“Over the next week, both of you will experience a revelation which will change your perspective in small part.”

Kane groaned. “Do you have anything more specific?”

“That’s all I’ll give you. Knowing fate is a dangerous thing. Now, goodnight, Ismet Kane.”

Kane tensed. “Don’t.”

Ada hesitated. “My apologies.”

With that, she opened the door to her cottage and disappeared back inside.

***

Rada was stubborn. Once she had decided she was staying at the edge of the clearing, it had been set in stone. She hadn’t been able to sleep, though, try as she could. She was used to having her brother and Kane close to her while they slept. She had seen Kane settle outside the cottage to watch over her and her brother through the night, but that hadn’t made sleeping at the edge of a dark forest while her mind was tossed from thought to thought any easier.

She had seen Kane and the old hag talking last night. Soft voices as they were, the clearing was still quiet enough that she could catch a few words and phrases here and there. What she heard, she wasn’t sure how she felt about. In the end, after hours of turning it over while she pretended to be asleep, she had figured it would be best to leave it as it was, especially considering she was missing the full conversation anyway. Besides, it was none of her business if Kane hadn’t decided to tell her.

But what she _had_ heard still _bothered_ her. She watched Kane move about the clearing, chopping firewood and repairing holes on the roof. He had brought her some breakfast that morning after she hadn’t joined them. When he had given it to her she was half-tempted to ask him if he really felt that he was being forced to be with them. Kane had been with them for so long, and his role had been so melded into her everyday life, that she had forgotten that Kane didn’t actually _need_ to guard them. He wasn’t on the posters. He was only bound by a promise to Ama – but Rada also felt that, if Kane really tried, he could rescue Ama without her or Nik anyway.

Was she a burden to Kane?

“He doesn’t see you like that, dear.”

“Like what, hag?” Rada snapped.

“Like how you think he sees you.”

“Just because you had one chat with him last night doesn’t mean you magically know him better than me.”

“No. I never meant to imply that, dear.”

“Sure. Are you done consoling me now?”

“What exactly are your issues with me, I wonder, Radomira?”

“I thought I spelled them out pretty clear yesterday.”

“Not entirely. I’m rather old and my mind isn’t what it used to be.”

A strange feeling swept over Rada. A flash of a warm embrace, dark caramel skin and the smell of a warm fireside as she lay in her mother’s arms. She found herself talking before she could think.

“My entire life I’ve been told that I’m the true princess of Priyana. But Ama never cared for that. My destiny has always been pushed aside for Nik’s. _Nik_ is the heir. I’m just the excess. Sometimes I wonder why Ama even rescued me from my uncle, if he never intended to teach me anything. He tells me I’m the princess. He tells me it isn’t me who will be queen. He tells me I can’t do this and that, because princesses don’t do that. He dictated my entire life to me, and nobody ever cared to intervene. So I’ve decided that I’ll be queen, because the entire world, and Ama, and the gods who made me second-born, decided that I wouldn’t be.”

“I see.”

Rada wiped back a tear that had tracked its way to her jaw, and drew a shaky breath. “I envy you. Out here in the woods. No one bothers you. You can stick to your fake predictions and trickery all alone out here. Maybe it might have been easier if I grew up like this, instead of with Ama.”

“Your path was mapped out by the universe before humanity even existed. There is no changing it. Gods can see the vague shapes forming, but they cannot adjust them. Gods can understand it, though, like a second language. You feel these things because you were meant to, and they will guide you down the path of your life to unexpected locations. Radomira, I never said you would be queen. I never said you would not. But I can say for sure that these feelings will lead you to a great destiny.”

Rada was silent. She took a moment to steady her breathing.

“I still think you’re pretending all of this. But it did make me feel better, for now. So, thanks, I guess.”

“Trust in the gods, Radomira.”

***

Nik watched Ada shuffle around her shelves in her kitchen. She was reorganising something or rather, and had insisted Nik come inside and keep her company while she did.

“It’s the spring equinox today. I suspect you know this – gods associate themselves with certain seasons and days.”

“The spring equinox is Mierche’s.” A small smile broke into Nik’s expression as memories of small town festivals came to mind. “We would celebrate it sometimes, in Tarrin.”

“Yes. Did you know of its other patron? The mother goddess, the first of them all.”

Nik frowned. “Demet.”

“Mother of Mierche and creator of life.” Ada stacked several pots into each other. “She is almost forgotten.”

“She’s a remnant of Old Priyana. She never passed on spirit magic. She’s more a…figure to know of than to worship, by what I read.”

“She’s rather shy. She chooses one person, every so often, to pass her spirit magic into. She has her worshippers, but they don’t have her magic. A curious case.”

“She has worshippers? I read that she – well, I guess Tarrin’s collection of books isn’t outstanding.”

“I tell you this,” Ada whipped out a rag from her apron and began wiping down a dusty pewter cup, “Because before you were born, she passed her magic to a child. In time, that child, now a young warrior, will become a valuable ally and close friend, in particular…to your Prince’s Guard.”

“To Kane?”

Ada lifted the heavy iron pots with surprising ease, setting them in a cupboard above her head. “Yes. And this person will save your life.”

“Who is this person?”

“You have already met.”

“We have?”

“Have patience. Your fight will be long and hard, but fruitful. The gods have made mistakes in trust, and are working to repair the havoc they have wreaked.”

“What exactly –”

“Come. Let’s watch the sun set. The spring equinox is a time of change. I sense that tonight your sister and your Guard may be affected by that, in some small part.”

***

Kane was, once again, outside, on a wooden crate, staring at the stars. It wasn’t that he had to guard from here anymore – Rada had finally decided to sleep inside for the night, meaning Kane could have been inside the house as well. It was just that he really couldn’t get to sleep. He wasn’t quite sure why, but his thoughts had been in disarray for the last few days. It was as if his entire life was swirling around and he was trying to find the thread to let him pull himself out of the storm and above so he could look down on it and know who he was. He still hadn’t found his thread, and, as Ada had said, his soul and his being were still ‘tangled’.

He sighed, and traced shapes in the stars. Nik knew how to form them into constellations which would translate to a direction and a location. Kane didn’t know how to do that. He knew how to fight, and he knew how to protect. But he didn’t have any book-smarts like Nik, or social-smarts like Rada. He didn’t even have any clue to what kind of person he really was. He felt emotions, but for the longest time they had felt muted. It had been unwise to weep on the streets of Nahvsenn, and it had been out of line to weep while Ama was training him. Now, he was unsure. Were Nik and Rada his friends? Ama had always had some control over the relationship the three shared. But Ama had never known everything about them. He never knew that the three of them laughed and ran and threw mud at each other in the spring rains when they were young, no consideration for royalty or class in mind at all. Ama always thought Nik, Rada, and Kane had been some kind of version of how it would have been if they were all still in Inurya Palace.

It had been like that, a little, for Kane. He knew his place. He knew that he served Nik and Rada. But he thought of them as his friends, as his family. Did they think of him like that? He had always tried to keep them remembering that he should not be too close to them. Friends, they may be, but they didn’t even know his first name, and that was because he hadn’t let them. They couldn’t forget that he was below them – that’s what Ama had taught him.

He was tangled, indeed.

He barely heard the movement of air as a hidden enemy dropped from the roof in front of him. His sword caught the dark-haired foe’s blade just in time. Under the mostly-full moon, Kane could clearly see his face. He had only seen it once before, but the emerald green eyes, keen for the fight, were unmistakeable.

“You again.”

Kane pushed against his enemy’s sword, struggling into a standing position. He threw his opponent away from him, and the green-eyed fighter stumbled back a little. Kane took the opportunity to get into stance and charge, leading an advance away from the cottage and Nik, Rada, and Ada inside. He got halfway through the clearing towards the forest when he was finally able to make a sharp parry and, in quick, skilful movements, disarmed his mysterious repeat attacker.

“Aha! Gotcha this ti–”

Kane was abruptly cut off as he saw his adversary pull an object that Kane was way too familiar with from his time with Rada. He ducked down, dodging the path of the throwing knife, and sprung back up only to have his enemy now right in front of him, dagger in each hand. Kane threw his arm up, letting the sword and his bracers take the hits, but now he was at a disadvantage. He was armoured for sword fights – long weapons, heavy two-handed attacks. But now he was facing a much quicker assault.

And gods _damn_ , this guy was quick. Kane was just barely able to defend himself. The attacks were weaker than they had been with the sword, but the speed at which they were coming all but made up for it. It was clear, now they were in such close quarters, that his enemy was armoured for speed. It was leather armour he wore. Thin, not strong, but light. Kane wrinkled his nose. _Yet he still starts his fights with a sword._ The audacity, the sheer confidence of it all, had Kane reeling. He grunted, and managed to find enough firm footing on the ground to push heavily against the light-armoured assailant.

It was enough, it seemed, to have the attacker tipping backwards. He sprung up, perhaps to leap backwards to steady himself, but his heel caught on something on the ground, and he continued his arc to the dirt. He fell quickly, but not quickly enough that he missed grabbing onto Kane’s belt and pulling him down on top of him. Kane managed to topple over onto his knees instead of onto his face, but the attacker had already regained enough thought to dive forward, pushing Kane over and sending him onto his back, hitting the floor hard and sending a rush of air out of his lungs. His attacker was now crouching on his chest, daggers pointed to his throat.

Kane glared into his enemy’s emerald green eyes. His attacker didn’t seem to show any emotion, but Kane saw the familiar glow of excitement in his eyes. It occurred suddenly to Kane that he was grinning almost manically, an image helped none by the fact that he currently had a knee on his chest and two blades at his throat.

This guy seemed to _hesitate_ to kill him. The two seconds of waiting was all it took for Kane to take his chance and pitch forward. The move was successful, and now he lay atop his foe instead. His sword had been knocked out of his grasp as he hit the ground, but he wrested one of the daggers from his enemy’s grip and held it to the other’s throat. His attacker had recovered, though, and Kane had a blade at his throat again.

In the cool spring night air, the silence gave way to the soft hooting of an owl, and the combined panting breaths of the two of them. Kane was still grinning. This was thrilling. This was a real fight, where he wasn’t sure he would win. This was a challenge.

But this was now also another impasse. They were matched. If one of them didn’t kill the other now, they would be stuck like this forever. Or at least, that’s what he thought…

Until his enemy managed to somehow roll them over without pressing a dagger into either his nor Kane’s throat, and darted away, grabbing his sword as he left. Kane immediately tried to spring to his feet, but he found himself stuck. He had, it seemed, shoved his foot into a bundle of vines. He was stuck. He watched, frustrated, as his rival, his match, slipped into the trees and out of sight.

He sighed, and, using the dagger he had stolen from his foe, began hacking away at the vines. Had he really been that clumsy with his footwork? He could have sworn those weren’t there before.

It was yet another un-lost, un-won battle with this mysterious opponent. The next time they met – and Kane felt that the third time might be lucky – it would end properly. One of them would win. One of them would lose.

***

Rada was woken up much too late and much too early, by an old hag with a lantern in her hand.

“Wha…?”

“Come with me.”

Rada opened her mouth to protest, but that warm feeling – of comfort, of a familiar embrace – flowed through her again, and for some reason it had her climbing out of her blankets and following the woman through her cottage, past a sleeping Kane – who was clutching an unfamiliar dagger to his chest – and out the door into the clearing. She followed Ada out about a mile into the forest. They were deep in the forest, the dark silhouettes of ancient trees looming around her like shadowy giants. Usually, they would be imposing, but Rada could feel nothing but the warm compelling of her mother’s arms. It struck her as odd, as strange, but she couldn’t stop placing one foot in front of the other.

Finally, they came to a tree stump. The trees around had not been cut. It seemed this was the only one. On the stump there was a small shrine set up. Carved tokens and trinkets, made from what Rada thought might be seashell and driftwood, were assorted around a black, shiny stone with a magnificent wave pattern carved onto it, below the top figure of a carved sun.

“What is this?” She didn’t know why, but she whispered it.

“Radomira. You are headed for Nahvsenn. There are two ways in and out of the city from the south-west. One of them is in Riverbridge. You _must_ _not_ go through Riverbridge.”

Rada tilted her head. She could feel oncoming panic, confusion. She was utterly mystified, and she was beginning to feel a force of sheer power emanating from the crooked old woman, yet her own body seemed trapped in a false warm comfort. Suddenly, she caught light flare from the corner of her eye. She turned to look at the shrine, where the candles were suddenly ablaze with flames raging seven foot tall. She spun back to the hag only to see her straighten, and she was glowing. Her hair whipped around her, wild curls like the untameable ocean waves, and she was tall – so tall. Rada’s neck craned, and the woman in front of her was ten feet high, draped in a billowing skirt and fire red ribbons wrapped around her chest and whipping about in a wild energy, all so vibrant and wild, and emanating heat. The wax on the candles was dripping like the sweat from Rada’s brow, and she stumbled back, landing on the ground but barely registering it for the huge figure in front of her, fire incarnate, and Rada understood, in that moment, that this woman was the mother of flame.

“Radomira. The Island of Fire awaits you. On this island to the south, you will be reborn into fire, and you will finally know who you are to be.”

Rada quivered. Her eyes travelled up the expanse of fire and dark skin, up to the eyes, which were ablaze with blue flame. And she understood something, something deep inside which clicked into place. The glowing eyes were not cruel. And when the wash of warm comfort, of maternal love, found her again, she let the wave flow over her and into her.

***

Nik stuffed the supplies and the medicine into their bags. He had slept alright, but Kane and Rada both looked like they had been put through hell. He shrugged it off. Bad nights were bound to happen every now and then. If they didn’t want to talk about it, then it was their choice.

“Thank you for this. It means the world.”

“It’s a shame you don’t stay longer. I certainly could use more help around here from you boys!”

“We would stay, honest. But we…”

“No, no. I understand the pressure of destiny better than anyone else.”

“Thank you. Again.”

“Ah…it really was no issue! It was nice to have company.” Ada paused, then turned to Rada. “This is for you.” She passed her a small object. Nik peered around Kane to get a better look. He watched as Rada slipped the gift over her neck – a necklace of some kind. The pendant, by what he could see, was a smooth black stone, with a pattern he couldn’t quite make out carved into it. “Now go. May Lady Luck lay her hands upon your quest.”

And so, the three left into the forest, and continued onward once more toward their destinies.

***

As the trio left the clearing, Ada stood up, her tall, goddess figure graceful amongst the trees, and as the three teenagers faded from view, she disappeared. The clearing filled with trees, and the cottage became rubble and rust once more, laying dormant and untouched as it had for the last four hundred years.


	6. Riverbridge

“I’ll be paying you five gold now. The rest,” the man in silk robes placed a small chest on the table, unclasped its pin, and lifted its lid to reveal glittering coins. “Will be paid by my daughter when she sees that you have dealt with the thief.” He closed the lid and locked it back in a drawer in his desk.

Ronin looked from the spot where the chest had been to the rich merchant sitting behind his desk, leaning forward to balance his head on his clasped hands. In front of him, sitting on the edge of the desk, was the small stack of coins that served as his deposit.

Ronin considered for a moment. Or, at least, pretended to consider. It was an easy decision. His mission from Leander, as alluring as the promised pay had been, was turning out to be worth much more. The last time his fights had been anything more than a minor struggle was when he was much younger, and only yet another emerging sword-for-hire and hungry Soul City street urchin. Yet the enemy that the prince had put him up against was edging his fights into near losses each time they met. Never mind that it had only been twice they had encountered – that was enough for Ronin to realise the pay wasn’t worth it. Instead he turned to making his way through the towns and cities of western Priyana until he reached Inurya City, where there would be much more work to be found for his talents.

Riverbridge was the first stop.

He took the coins. It was an awful deposit, but the final payment was most certainly far too much for such an easy job. It was nothing unusual – rich clients had a tendency to overpay. Their concept of money and expense was bizarre. Ronin had enough experience with them to know not to question it.

“Good. I’ll be leaving for Nahvsenn this evening. I’ll be back in two days, I expect the job to be done before then. Take this afternoon to prepare whatever you need to complete your task.”

Ronin pocketed the coins and left the study, emerging into the high ceilings of the successful Soul State merchant’s holiday villa in outer Riverbridge. Through the windows spread along the hallway, he could see the Nahvsenn Mountains reaching into the clouds at the edge of the large town. To the west and closer to the mansion, the blue line of the Mier River and a huge, tall bridge connected to an immense wall artfully split Riverbridge into east and west sides, and confined it to a space away from the mountains and the small canyon that served as the only legal west-side entrance into Soul City.

To the very far east, he could see the grey, less architecturally stunning mass of Hankala, pressed against the lower ridges of one of the mountains. Ronin was thankful he wasn’t accepting jobs from the district anymore. He wouldn’t call his own services honest work, but it was impressed upon him early in his ‘career’ that the ratio of risk to pay-off from jobs there was unfair, even for some of his far from legal services.

Ronin needed money for a bed, for food and for travel. It was why he took jobs from the kinds of people who had looked down upon him and his kin as he grew up. For him, survival was the priority – so it was logical that he wouldn’t bother with a job if it left him laying lifeless in a smoggy grey corner of Hankala.

***

Nik poked a stick into the fire, watching as sparks burst from the embers in response. One of the vivid particles soared upwards, then floated gently down and onto the toe of his boot. There, it faded quickly from its orange glow to yet another unidentifiable speck of dirt on his shoe.

“So,” Nik gestured with the stick to Kane and Rada. “We’re getting close to Nahvsenn.”

“We are,” Kane concurred with a nod.

“It’s a city with tight security. We should plan how we’re gonna enter.”

“The main way is through Riverbridge, isn’t it? You take a ferry through the mountains directly into the city port,” Kane said.

“That’s the main route, yeah.”

Rada suddenly dove headfirst into a coughing fit. After a few seconds of undecipherable syllables, she spluttered out a panicked, “No way!”

Nik and Kane glanced at Rada. She was staring at the campfire, wide-eyed. Nik raised one eyebrow at her. “Uh…what?”

“Just. Nik, please. We can’t go to Riverbridge.”

“Alright. I mean, it isn’t a bad idea, Riverbridge _is_ a major town and there’s the risk of us being caught but…little intense there, sis.”

Rada stared into his eyes pleadingly. She clearly had some kind of serious issue, and Nik was wont to admit that he really didn’t have the strength to deal with her complaining and picking a fight with him for the rest of their journey.

He groaned and seceded. “I’ve heard of a place near Riverbridge that offers another way in, but…” Nik hesitated, heading down a trail of thoughts that ended in dark places. He shook himself back into their present and continued. “If we get killed while we’re there, I’m blaming it on you.”

This seemed to placate Rada, who simply nodded. Nik chewed at his lip, deep in worried thought. He had been planning to sneak through Riverbridge, using the inevitable crowds to hide themselves and stow away on a ferry. He knew Kane was skilled, but he wasn’t in any assurance at all that the secondary route would get them to Nahvsenn as safely as he was sure his initial plan would have. He had the illegal route in mind, of course, as a secondary measure, but after some consideration he had realised they would probably be much better off sneaking onto a ferry than going through whatever underground way into Nahvsenn that Hankala provided.

Still, though, that night, he didn’t sleep, and instead spent the hours poring over his map, planning a route to Hankala. Perhaps perceiving the reality of her preferences could do to sway Rada to his plan.

***

The mansion had a large indoor balcony which overlooked the lower floors. From there, Ronin could see many of the numerous entry points his client’s thief could be using. It was a loose, open house, and, at least in Ronin’s experience, Riverbridge thieves weren’t _particularly_ skilled. The more capable thieves stayed in Nahvsenn, sneaking into the luxurious villas of Soul State politicians in the upper-class rings of the valley city. There was a far better chance for a successful haul – he would know. But this relaxed manor was certainly a ripe fruit for the starving of Riverbridge.

“I didn’t know that my father hired such an _attractive_ thief-catcher.” Ronin was crouching, peering down through the ornate iron rails of the balcony to find where the thief would most likely enter. He glanced up at the sound of a light voice.

Beside him was the merchant’s daughter. She was petite, with olive skin and long brown hair swept back into an elaborate braid. She had a single hand placed gently on the horizontal rail, the sleeves of her elegant loose top flowing like a waterfall over the edge.

Ronin replied to her attempt with silence. He could feel the outrage at being ignored billowing off her. Rich girls and boys were like that – fond to flirt a little with the guy with the sword, yearning for an adventure that would never come to them nor suit them.

“My name is Leyna.”

Ronin’s eyes caught on an area near a few windows on the second floor. There, a shadow from thick curtains cast across a bust on a tall pedestal and supplied a field of shadow. It was obscured significantly from his view by the overhang of the balcony Ronin was peering out from. Abruptly, he swung over the railing to drop neatly into the second floor, intending to get a closer look on the enshadowed spot which eluded his clear vision.

He trailed over to one of the windows and inspected it closely. There was an ever-so-fine trace of dust on the sill. Footsteps, refined and soft, came to a stop behind him. He turned around when he was done with scanning the window to see Leyna standing near him once again, her wide, billowing blue silk pants gently brushing the tiled floor, accentuating her stern posture as she leaned on one side of her hip, arms crossed and expectant gaze cast his way.

“Don’t bother,” Ronin offered, and moved to the window to his left.

“I know your type. Acting like the child of finery can’t handle a little action. Well, my boredom speaks volumes. Let me talk to you.”

“You don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

Ronin squinted at the windowsill. There was a faint, clean circle amongst the dust, where in the centre was a smudge of dried mud. Internally, he smirked. This would be a very easy job. It had been a little over year since he had last been in Riverbridge, but the talent of the town’s thieves clearly hadn’t improved in that time.

“I demand you tell me why you refuse to talk to me.”

Ronin sighed. The attitude of his clients was one of the unfortunate negatives of many of his better-paying jobs. He was long used to it, but it still stepped on his nerves. Instead of replying, he again opted to ignore her and got back to the task at hand. He let a small seed fall from his hand, where it landed gently on the sill and bloomed into a small stem and a petite green leaf. He then journeyed back up to the balcony, where he sat in wait for his target to arrive.

***

Rada was initially grateful that her brother had listened to her. They weren’t going to Riverbridge. The flaming old hag couldn’t haunt her about that, at least. Instead they were heading to an area just east. When they arrived some time after sunset, however, her older brother’s warning from the night of their discussion rang loud and clear through her memory.

Hankala was grey and dirty. People dressed in rags and rusty, stained armour were curled in alleyways on the edge of the street. The shacks, all in varying states of disrepair, were shoved closely to the edge of a road lined with broken glass. If the windows weren’t smashed or boarded up, then they were coated with a layer of grime that warped the light from the lamps inside into an unwelcoming, dull mustard glow. Bandits lounged on the steps with their daggers, bows and arrows, swords, axes, and all manner of weaponry glinting menacingly in the moonlight. Rada could feel their eyes on her as they traversed the road.

As they walked past one of the many decaying inns, two men dressed in faded, thin leather armour burst from the window. They rolled around the ground in a vicious, bloody fistfight. As their fight carried them into a dark, grungy alley, a woman so thin she could be easily compared to a sapling casually exited the inn with a broom and began sweeping the broken window glass into a singular pile. She looked as shaken as she would if nothing had happened at all.

Finally, Nik led them off the street to the inside of another inn, this one at least with all windows intact. “We’ll sit and plan our next move fro– _hey_!”

Rada’s focus swung abruptly from where she had been suspiciously eyeing what looked like the skeleton of a rat in the corner, to Nik, who was fuming at a heavyset woman. She was all muscles, and wore leather armour with thick iron pauldrons on her shoulders, and an eyepatch covered her left eye. Her blond hair was short and unkempt, and her dark skin was speckled with scars and freckles. On her forearms were iron gauntlets to match her pauldrons. In her leather-gloved hands she was holding…their money. Rada turned to Nik, outraged.

“This is why I told you to give the money to Kane, you utter–” Rada was interrupted by the bandit holding their bag of coins.

“Now, now. There’s no need for an argument. We were just saying how we’re all rather _bored_ , and you just walked in at the perfect time! I figured you three might like a nice little competition. I know _we_ would.”

“Give us our money back!” Kane protested, and Rada swore to the gods that this would be the last time Kane would yell that at someone.

“I will, I will! Geez, relax.” The bandit put her hands up in a half-surrender gesture – and action which made their bag of coins swing yearningly from her fingertips – then dropped her palms back to her sides and continued. “I’ll make you a deal – you three go up against us three, and if you win, you can have your money back.”

“And if we lose?” Rada said.

The bandit leaned against the bar and tossed the bag of coins from one hand to the other. “Then we get everything.”

“Everything?” Kane asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The bandit chuckled and looked him dead in the eye. “Everything.”

Rada could see Nik and Kane overthinking. She groaned as her thoughts followed close behind theirs. If they didn’t answer soon, the situation would escalate. Nik could barely fight and Rada was better with long-range. And if they ran out of Hankala, then they would be forced to use Riverbridge to enter Nahvsenn. Nik would certainly use this encounter to advocate for the last option. That absolutely could not happen.

Before the other two could speak, Rada made the choice. “We’ll agree to your deal.”

The trio of bandit women grinned in unison.

***

Kane rolled his shoulder. He clenched and unclenched his fists. The short, stocky woman in front of him grinned a toothy grin, exposing a single gold tooth. She downed a large mug of ale in one huge gulp, before wiping the froth from her lips and cracking her knuckles.

“You ready?”

“Sure.”

The three bandits’ leader – the one who had introduced herself first to Kane, Nik, and Rada by stealing their money – spoke up as she stared Kane down. “No weapons.”

Kane grimaced, and tossed his sword and his two daggers – his own, and the one he had taken from his mysterious rival four days ago – to the side. “Bring it on.” He clenched his fists and shifted into stance. His opponent mirrored him – and whipped out a heavy chain.

“I thought you said –”

“That’s only for you, honey!” The bandit leader looked like she was having the time of her life, leaning casually against the bar and eyeing the two fighters like a cat to a shaking mouse in its paws.

“Fine,” Kane said. He supposed he couldn’t expect a fair fight from a pub brawl with a bandit in Hankala.

“Are we all ready to go? Sava?”

Kane’s chain-wielding foe gave her leader a brief thumbs-up gesture. “I’m all good, Iulia.”

Sava lunged for Kane. Kane rolled out of the way, but the bandit had other plans, quickly whipping around and down into a crouch and tossing the end of the chain towards his ankles. He hastily slid his feet out of its aim. Instead, the chain fell with a rough _thud_ onto the wood floor of the inn. It lay there only briefly, like a strangely dissected metal snake, before it was rearing up and sailing through the air again towards Kane’s wrist. He slipped impulsively out of its reach once again.

He was currently keeping to evading. Sava was throwing whip after whip of her chain at him, the weight of the iron seemingly nothing to her. He was, thankfully, able to skip out of her attacks, and was now more grateful than ever to Ama for years of forcing him to practise steady and quick footwork.

In this kind of fight, his tactic would usually be to continue outrunning attacks and stay on defence until his opponent tired, before delivering the defeating blow. But as he dodged another chain whip, his eyes momentarily came to rest on their bag of coins, held casually in Iulia’s four-fingered left hand – they needed those coins back sooner rather than later.

He swept past another chain whip, made to dash to the right, and watched as the chain flew his way. Abruptly, he twisted his charge into his intended direction, and made to snatch the coins from Iulia.

Iulia reacted almost casually. She tossed the bag of coins in the air, grabbing Kane’s wrist as he approached, and flipped him to the ground. The action was over in a second, and she caught the bag in her hands as it – and Kane – fell.

Kane could feel bruises blossoming. The ones he already had from his fight with his foe four days ago were aching even more now. He felt Iulia toe at his ribs. He groaned as he felt her push at another old bruise.

“This fight isn’t over until either you or Sava knock each other down. Get up.”

He rolled onto his back, and was confronted with the sight of the chain coming down again. He rolled again to get clumsily out of the way, but not quickly enough, and it managed to wrap itself around his ankle. He attempted to stand, but Sava wrenched the chain, and he toppled over again.

Sava was dragging him towards her, gleeful grin on her face. He scrabbled on the floor and his surroundings, desperately trying to find a holding. Finally, he managed to wrap his fingers around the leg of an oak chair, and he brought it up to Sava, smashing it into her shins. The chair, which was already ancient and decaying, fell apart upon impact, sending splinters into Sava’s leg. Briefly she released her grip on the chain, and Kane managed to shake himself loose from its grasp.

“Agh! What in Mi – oh no, you don’t!” Sava attempted to reach back for her chain as Kane hauled it towards himself. It was quite heavy – how was she wielding it so agilely? Kane tossed the chain aside. He readied into stance.

“Fists only now,” he told her.

Sava wrinkled her nose at him, before crouching quickly to dodge his punch. Kane’s fist hit thin air. He wasted no time in drawing it back and stepping out of the range of Sava’s spinning kick to his ankles. She was short – Kane was able to escape it easily. He stepped back in, grabbing her arm as she rose back up. Her eyes widened, and she used her free arm to send a hard punch to his stomach. He felt its impact echo throughout his entire body and knock the air out of him. He coughed, and a few drops of blood spattered from his mouth. It was a hard punch, one more solid than he’d ever felt. His grip on Sava’s arm weakened in response. She pushed herself out of his grasp. But instead of stepping away, she grabbed his neck and shoved him one-handedly to the bar. In the corner of his eye, he could see Iulia watching him get choked.

He struggled to breathe. Her strength was something else, almost inhuman. Her face was tensed in concentration as she used both hands to keep him down. His breath was being slashed with her fist around his neck. The edges of his vision were turning white. With eyes struggling to stay open and eyes unable to stay steady, his gaze dropped to her arms. There, he saw the striped chains of golden glow pulsing under her skin. It was the last thing he saw before his vision faded entirely.

For what felt like hours, he was suspended in a world of nothing.

***

Suddenly, Kane was a wild six-year-old, and he was fighting with a boy, another street scoundrel his age. He couldn’t tell where they were – the pale nothing around them formed their background instead of any contextualising details. All he knew was that they were both young, bruised, and bloody, and perhaps the two of them mattered more than where they were in this memory.

And it was not desperation but the rush of adrenaline, the thrill of a fight finally matched for each that ran through both their eyes.

Kane reached for the boy, hands sparking with the golden light he had always felt within finally bursting from underneath his skin. The boy mirrored him, both in action and in the trance he had slipped into, and when their hands met, golden vines and leaves grew from their fists, and flowed in stunning patterns up their skin.

When Kane opened his eyes, Sava had been knocked unconscious, and there was a large, shattered hole in the floor where she had stood. There were patterns glowing; rich gold veins against his dark skin – vines and leaves, pulsing with Soul Energy up his arms.

***

The night had been bearing on in a quiet, eventless drone for several hours when Ronin finally saw the flicker of a shadow near the window, and felt the subtle jump of spark in his bones that signalled his seedling had been disturbed.

He had been leaning, half-relaxed, in the corner of the overhanging balcony, waiting to catch the thief. Upon noticing the disturbance, he sprung into a crouching stance, and threw himself gracefully over the railing onto the second floor once more. The shadow had disappeared, but when he inspected the windowsill he saw a wet mud footprint, pointing towards inside the villa. The footprint sat right next to a crushed seedling, which he took gently in his hands, and with a faint green glow from his fingertips it receded back into an unbloomed seed once more. He pocketed the seed before turning to inspect the floor, where a trail of muddy footprints made their way across the clay tiles towards the west wing.

Ronin struck up a soft pace, not allowing his boots to toe a noise out of the floor. As he crept, he let the silence of the night sit upon his ears like a wire trap. Faint constants from town – like the bustling of the late-night industries – were far away and constant enough to ignore. For now, he simply followed the footsteps and listened.

Like an ankle snapping the wire of his trap, his ears perked up and honed to the sound that broke the tranquillity of the night – a girlish yelp of surprise that was quickly muffled. Ronin gave chase towards the sound, arriving in the study where he had first accepted the job that morning.

Leyna was behind her father’s desk, held captive with a knife against her throat by a skinny, ragged thirteen-year-old boy. In his other hand he held a familiar small chest. A look of daunting panic traced both his and the rich merchant’s daughter’s faces as Ronin entered the room, dagger drawn.

“Drop your weapons!”

Ronin stared at him blankly.

“I said d-drop ‘em!” The boy pulled Leyna closer to his short physique. Leyna seemed to be ready to pass out in fear. “Or I’ll kill ‘er. I-I swear to the gods, _I’ll do it._ ”

Ronin continued to look upon the boy without expression. He unhooked his sword from his back and let his one remaining dagger fall. The metal clattered to the floor, landing with a muted noise on the carpet.

***

Rada wasn’t sure whether or not she was comfortable in their chances of getting their money back or not at this point. Kane had destroyed the floor and sent one of the bandits flying into a table, an action with which the other two bandits didn’t appear to be very satisfied. Iulia seemed to be plotting out some kind of secondary plan, if her hasty actions and half-shouted panicked quips were anything to go by. She had been leaning onto the bar, right next to Kane as he had shot Sava across the room. After that had happened, she hadn’t been acting as assured. From there she had seen something that had changed her perspective of them greatly.

Rada, from her position near the door, had been unable to see much more than Sava’s back as she pinned Kane to the bar by his throat. She was left somewhat clueless as to what had caused the sudden shift in the demeanour of the room – even Kane seemed to be a little upset, having spent the past few minutes since his fight resting in a corner by himself and shaking off any help Nik or Rada offered.

He clearly wanted to be left alone for now. Whatever force destroyed the floor had left him as shaken and uncertain as Iulia and her two bandits. Sava had come into consciousness shortly after Iulia had declared the fight in Kane’s favour, and now sat curled up in a booth and staring, confused and enraged, at Kane from across the room.

Iulia approached Rada and Nik, her confident gait now lacking its former honesty. She grinned joylessly at the two. Apparently she was going to try to keep up a façade. Rada felt vaguely irritated by that – the least she could do would be to admit she was scared of losing to them. Iulia directed her attention to Nik, who had to peer up slightly to meet her eyes.

“Next round, you’ll be going up against me.”

“Against Nik?” Rada said.

“If that’s this tiny kid’s name, then yeah.”

Kane spoke out again from the corner nearby. His voice was thin. “I’ll take his place. Whatever the challenge is, I’ll take his place.”

“Kane…” Rada began.

“I swore an oath.”

“You’ve already gone. No double-ups,” Iulia snapped at Kane.

Rada chewed at her lip subconsciously, concern wracking her mind. Kane still looked as if he was on the verge of throwing up, but he was protesting nevertheless.

“But I –” he tried.

“Do you want your money back or not?” Iulia glared at Kane, who pursed his lips. “Exactly what I thought. Your friend here will be attempting to beat me…in an arm-wrestle.”

Rada frowned. She examined Iulia’s clearly well-exercised biceps, then her brother’s scrawny physique. He was going to lose this one in the blink of an eye. Leaving _any_ kind of job to Nik would inevitably end up in failure. And now Nik was contesting for their money – the only money they had. Rada closed her eyes, resigned herself, then reopened them. “If Kane can’t take his place, then I will.”

“Nope.”

“What do you mean, _‘nope’?!_ I’m playing by your rules, gods damn me, and if I say I’ll take my dumbass brother’s place then I gods damn will! Shut up and arm wrestle me, you –”

“We’re _bandits._ I make up rules as I go, and I say you’re banned from competing in arm wrestles with me!”

“You won’t be banning me from _anything_ when I –”

“Rada.” Nik’s steady voice, a strange air echoing through it, rung through the air and ended her explosion of insults and threats before they began. He then spoke to Iulia. “I accept.”

“Good. Very good. Pick a table, we’ll begin when Mirza chooses.”

***

There was now the issue of not only his pay in the hands of a thirteen-year-old, but also of Leyna, who had taken it upon herself to start yelling at Ronin like the world was ending and he was the one behind it. He scowled. This job was easy, overpaid, and he was sure he’d have his money by the end of the night. The hapless rich teenager being dramatic wasn’t anything new to him either – it was just _irritating._

As the thirteen-year-old reached the ornate red oak doors, Ronin reached into a slim pocket at his side to reveal a throwing knife. The young thief took immediate notice and stilled his attempts to push open the door. The thief slid his dagger softly against Leyna’s neck, and the slightest spot of red appeared as it broke the delicate skin beneath. She started struggling and screaming even more, hurling indecipherable, high-pitched insults at the both of them. The thief was now also yelling, shouting orders and threats at Ronin and Leyna. His wiry arms seemed quite strong – or Leyna was quite weak – because even though she was a full foot taller than him of struggling rich girl he kept her captive with ease.

Ronin casually flicked his hand, and his throwing knife shot across the room and lodged itself in the boy’s wrist. He dropped his dagger, and it fell with a _clunk_ to the floor at Leyna’s feet. Leyna took the opportunity to push herself away from the thief to behind her father’s desk, where she continued to voice her complaints. The thief, taking a single glance at Ronin’s unaffected posture and fingers ready to draw another throwing knife from his pockets, darted hastily out of the study with the chest and out of the merchant’s manor.

With the thief gone, Ronin had a few seconds of blissful silence, through which he picked up his sword and dagger. Leyna broke it by slamming her fist on the table and demanding, in a hoarse voice, “Father told me you were the best gods damn hire in the country.”

Ronin stared at her.

“ _What in Mierche’s name is this!?”_

He exited the room in pursuit of his money. As he flung himself out the window and into the streets of Riverbridge to give chase, he muttered to himself a response.

“The norm.”

***

Nik was an idiot. No number of books her brother hauled around and studied would ever solve his lack of common sense.

But he was holding up alright.

Definitely odd. Rada hadn’t read too many books, and neither was she anything like Nik, so she had no ideas on how that made sense. Kane was watching, eyes half-glazed as he wandered between watching Nik, and whatever state he had slipped into after somehow blowing a hole into the floor of the tavern.

Iulia clearly wasn’t trying too hard. Maybe that was part of it. Although, Iulia could have easily twisted Nik’s arm inside out with little effort. She seemed a little perplexed by the fact that she hadn’t done anything of the sort just yet, but altogether wasn’t too affected. She wasn’t _struggling_ against the scrawny seventeen-year-old that was Rada’s brother, so she figured he probably didn’t register as a threat in Iulia’s mind. She was probably toying with him.

Rada swore Nik didn’t register as a threat in _anyone’s_ mind. Rada glowered at her older brother’s back. How was _he_ the heir? At least Rada knew how to notch an arrow. Nik could barely hold a practice sword without toppling over.

Her brother was an utter weakling, who had currently held out against Iulia for over thirty seconds. She narrowed her eyes. Why couldn’t Iulia just get it over with? This was lame. Nobody needed proving that Nik was weak. There was no need to play with him.

Maybe it might humble him, though. If he lost an arm-wrestle with a bandit he might give the throne to Rada. It was a silly fantasy, but a girl could have her dreams of reigning her country if she so desired.

“You even trying, kiddo?”

“Haven’t pushed me down yet.” Nik grinned at Iulia.

She chuckled. With a barely perceptible push, Nik’s arm wavered towards the table. “Yet.”

A few moments passed, until Nik, teeth clenched, closed his eyes and let the back of his palm hit the table. Iulia smirked, and her two friends erupted into cheers. Nik made his way back to where Rada was standing beside Kane.

“Sorry.”

Rada clenched her fists. “We need our money back.”

“I know, I know!”

“What were you thinking, taking her on? Why did you accept?”

“I just – I _did_ have a strategy in mind, it was just more of a bet and…it didn’t work out in my favour.”

“So now we’re tied. And it’s up to me, _as usual_ , to fix your mistakes.” Rada scowled at Nik. He pursed his lips. She ignored his protests, and marched up to Iulia. She shoved her dagger under the bandit’s neck, glaring into the woman’s eyes with fiery heat. She felt like she might spontaneously combust with frustration. This situation was ridiculous. It was _their_ money, and now they were competing for it like it was some kind of _prize._

“You give me the final task and I swear to Mierche and Ninurta and Mehmed and to the _gods damn throne of this country, I will kick your ass at it.”_

Iulia just raised one eyebrow. Her eyes flickered down to the knife at her throat, betraying some nervousness on her part at least, but otherwise she seemed barely affected. Rada bared her teeth and shoved the point further in, pricking the skin.

“Geez, kiddo!” was Iulia’s response. Rada would have happily pushed the blade further at being degraded like that, but before she could have enacted on that idea, Iulia had skilfully disarmed her, sending the dagger flying from her hand and grabbing her wrist forcefully. Rada hissed, and attempted to tug out of her grip, but the tall woman held her in an iron grip. A wave of something hot that made her tremble washed over her – an anger at being in such a shamefully embarrassing situation so red and volatile it had her screaming insults and words she couldn’t even distinguish them herself. It wasn’t just the way this bandit had disarmed her so easily, it was that Nik had lost, it was that they were being taunted with their own property.

It was that it was _her protests_ that had gotten them into this situation in Hankala.

That fortune teller old hag was going to go through hell at Rada’s hands once this was over.

Iulia let her go, and Rada stumbled backwards. The back of her knees collided with a bar stool. She grabbed it and lumbered forward, preparing to swing it. Just as she began to hurl it backwards, she felt warm hands on her shoulders.

“Rada.” It was a familiar voice, one that made her see clearly once again and not from deep within a thick wavering cloud of emotion. She came to, and Kane was in front of her, hand on her shoulder and concern etched into every feature.

She took a deep breath.

This was familiar, now. It didn’t matter that they were in some seedy tavern in Hankala. This – Kane calming her, making her feel like she was protected, knowing that Kane would always be there to look after her – this was as familiar as the star constellations of freckles and the deep brown eyes she saw when she looked into the mirror. Kane blocked the view of the bandits and the world around her. It was just him – his solid chest and his eyes the colour of a forest that was just as mysterious and free-at-heart as he was.

Kane was familiar. He was the familiar in all of this mess.

And he didn’t need to be here, accompanying and protecting her and Nik. He didn’t _need_ to be doing this.

She pushed Kane aside, more of a tactile gesture than a forceful movement. He resisted momentarily, but Rada murmured, “I’m alright, now,” and he stepped from her view. She saw Iulia, who was considering her palms grimly.

“One day, island kid, you’ll make up for this,” Iulia snarled at her, and showed her palms, which were red and blistered, as if they had been shoved into the blue of a flame. Rada was momentarily taken aback – had _she_ done that? And _island kid?_ She had been born in Inurya Palace. What about her said anything about an island? She supposed she had always looked a little different from the people around her – her long oval face, the way her hair was so curly it was untameable, the way her nose wasn’t just crooked like many other Priyanis, but also wide. The warm undertones of her skin. Was that the features of some populace Ama had never taught her about? Or was she just strange looking enough to garner bizarrely particular shame?

She brushed it all aside – the burns, the peculiar insult. It was a concern for later – for yet another one of her sleepless nights. She took back to the task at hand of retrieving what little money she, Kane, and Nik had.

“Give me the next challenge.”

Instead of Iulia replying, it was the third bandit – Mirza – who stepped forward, gestured to a circular board decorated with painted concentric rings, and spoke.

“You any good at long-range?”

Rada took the three throwing knives she held in her hands from her. “Maybe I am.”

She turned to the board and threw the knife, smug confidence streaming through the shot. This was something she knew she was good at. She felt the knife leave her hand knowing it would hit the bull’s eye. She had done this not once nor twice but almost every day since she was just ten years old.

It missed. Totally, and utterly, it missed.

“Or maybe you aren’t.”

Rada spun furiously to Mirza. She opened her mouth to hurtle something that would hopefully traumatise the bandit, but upon seeing Kane in the background, she instead stepped away and let Mirza take her place, where she took an easy shot. It landed a ring away from the centre.

Rada swapped places again with Mirza, practically vibrating with barely-contained rage. Before she threw, she turned to her, and with gritted teeth asked, “Can I use my own instead?”

Mirza stared at her grimly. “No.”

Rada breathed deeply in an attempt to push her oncoming bout of rage back. It was semi-successful, and she opted to turn to the board and focus her senses on the knife in her hand. She rolled it in her palm, feeling its weight. She fidgeted with it for a few seconds, before she finally felt it – that slight drop of extra weight. It was a cheated knife. She closed her eyes, and envisioned her previous throw. Its arc came to her in flashes until she constructed its swayed path through the air from her familiar throw.

She reopened her eyes, and threw.

The knife landed two rings away from the bull’s eye.

Not bad, but not good enough. She stepped away, and let Mirza take her place.

Mirza landed in the same ring as Rada’s throw. Rada breathed in deeply, and ran through numbers in her head. The only way she could win, with her first abysmal throw, was to score bull’s eye, dead centre.

She stepped up to the plate, and felt the unfamiliar weight of the knife in her hand. She ran a finger along its sharp edge, feeling it prick her finger. She passed it between her fingertips, hummingbird quick. To anyone else, she was doing a flashy knife trick. But to her – she was buying time. She was inspecting the weight further, running estimates through her head.

There was no room for failure. She stilled, and hurled the knife through the air.

For a moment, the room stood dead silent. Time slowed, and the knife hovered in the air like a hummingbird. This was a true test of her skill. The knives had been weighted to drag the knife sharply away from the intended trajectory. The usual, straight arc of a throwing knife was completely inapplicable to them. It would curve, down and left.

With a sharp thud, the point of the cheating knife lodged itself deeply into the bull’s eye, and time resumed.

The room was silent. Rada stepped away from the plate, and back to Nik and Kane. She directed her attention to Iulia.

“Our money.”

The silence continued for what seemed like forever. Finally, Iulia narrowed her eyes and hissed. “Get them.”

The next thing Rada saw was Kane in front of her, sword protecting her and Nik from the knife Mirza threw their way.

“Run!” Nik cried, and Rada needed no second telling. She followed her brother out of the inn, and into the streets of Hankala, three skilled bandits in pursuit behind them. She could feel Kane’s presence behind them. They ran through indistinguishable, unfamiliar grey streets until her lungs burned and her muscles felt like sludge. Finally, they turned a corner into a quiet alley, and Kane told them they had managed to outrun their pursuers.

They didn’t speak for a while as the trio stopped to take their breath and wipe sweat off their brows. Finally, when Rada felt like she could push some kind of verbal communication from her chest, she spoke.

“And now we have no money, gods damn us.”

***

The streets of Riverbridge were still somewhat familiar from a year ago to Ronin. It was easy to track the thief, and easy to give chase once he caught sight of him. They darted across rooftops and through bustling streets full of Priyanis at the late-night markets the city was known for. Ronin finally saw the thief slip into an alley, and he followed without hesitation.

There, he was met with the sight of the young boy clutching his bleeding wrist, crouched against the wall. Ronin’s pay was still in its chest, but now loose from his grip and sitting on the filthy ground nearby. The boy looked up to meet Ronin’s eyes in fear, and he whimpered.

“I…”

Ronin drew his sword in the blink of an eye and stabbed it into the wall next to the young boy, grazing the skin of his ear. The boy paled, and dropped from his crouch to sit on the ground. With shaking hands, he took the chest next to him and held it above him. Ronin took it. He opened the chest, and retrieved three shining gold coins from within. He tossed them casually onto the boy’s lap.

“Fix your wrist.” Ronin leaned in, close to the boy’s face. “And don’t steal from that mansion.” He stood, withdrew his sword, and replaced it on his back in a single sharp, skilful motion.

He turned from the alley and headed down familiar streets towards one of the many inns in the city. He re-entered the bustle of the main streets, blending into the crowd. The hanging lanterns cast a warm glow onto the scene, and the vast array of people spread across the street like an eclectic royal carpet. At the corners, though, Ronin could see the underlay – the way guards were peppered every few metres, the flash of movement as yet another sufferer in rags was pulled away by said guards and emerged minutes later bruised and battered, the coin he had stolen from a rich lord gone from his grasp.

Ronin turned his eyes away.


	7. The Contest

Nahvsenn was one of the first cities of Priyana. With the Wind Settlements to the west, it was one of the only two still-occupied remnants of Old Priyana. It had been built so many millennia past there was no official known date of its founding, and in that it had become a constant – it was always there, it had always been there, and it would remain there for centuries to come. It had seen the flames of revolution, war, famine, and fortune more times than the worldliest traveller ever could hope. Surrounded on all sides by an abrupt wall of sturdy, tall mountains, it was well-known as a fortress city. Situated in the fertile valley between the Mier Mountain Range, its tiered form iconified it as a kind of artificial mountain in itself.

It was sometimes said that the first temple of Mierche was hidden somewhere in the valley. The mountains produced food, ore, and scenery that local and traveller alike oft described as holy – it certainly felt as if the god of Soul had in fact given the city his blessing. Though the history of the city was older than the written word, it was a commonly-held belief that it was named for the first woman Mierche taught the gift of Soul Energy to. She was the first disciple – the mother of Soul State and all her peoples.

That morning, Nahvsenn stood strong and beautiful in the dawn sunlight. Her uppermost tiers were still hidden by a low-hanging cloud, and the city, in its mist-enshrouded glory, became a mysterious, powerfully tall figure. At the foot of her tiers and hills, a ferry quietly sat at the dock of her south-western port. Its cargo was that of about a hundred tired Priyanis, who hauled their bags and their families into their new home city; or strutted confidently onto the wharf, past the checking point, and into a city they were familiar with. It was a city of prosperity – or at least, it was believed to be and once was – and many immigrated to the city for a new beginning out of a small town, be it in the Soul State, the lower Dark Lands, or even a certain few of the islands off the south Soul State coast.

Many of the new inhabitants of Nahvsenn on the dock that morning cast wary sights to the royal barge nearb, which had arrived an hour after they had. It was a fine thing, especially in comparison to the creaking, ancient wooden thing which they had floated through the mountain on. It was decorated with clean, proud flags and ornate rails; but held ominousness also – the iron plating and cannons on the side were all too indicative of its militaristic purpose. Yet if that hadn’t told the exhausted immigrants enough, the line of king’s men accompanying the crown prince of their country, as well as a chained prisoner, would have given it away pure and clear.

Though some of the more unaware hesitated, they were hasty to follow the path of the crowd around them as they saw a hundred bow their heads and avert their eyes in undisguised utter fear. The port, usually loud even at this early hour with the sounds of trade, immigration, and half-fettered children, had become eerily silent. The only sounds that echoed around the valley were of crows and seabirds cawing in the distance; the lapping of the river against the hulls of the ferries; and the grim _clang_ as metal armour met sinister weaponry at the steps of the king’s men.

The escort made its way past the check point and through the thick iron gate at the vast outer wall with no exchange of word or papers – the portrait of the king, queen, and the prince was in just about every building in the city. They disappeared through the gate and into the entrance tunnel. Their colossal shadows were cast upon the walls from the firelight of the torches hung on the mosaic-patterned inner façade. The story of a great battle from centuries ago was told in the mosaics, but they had been tiled so long ago and touched by so many a passing hand, only a few details could still be gleaned. The king’s men and their prince paid them no attention, instead strutting through almost soundlessly up the steps of the tunnel and into the city.

The tunnel took them upwards, past the lower districts and into the middle districts. They emerged into the sunlight once more and swept past the second checking point with ease. At this stage, if they were to turn and peer over the shoulder-height stone barrier at the of the tier, they would look down upon the city’s grimy lower class – though most ignored that, and instead were drawn to the view of being several hundred metres in the air already, eye-to-eye with the lower cliffs of some of the Mier Mountains, and faced with mile upon mile of fertile green grass, split into two plains by the blue line of the Mier River which they had arrived into Nahvsenn by, and now wrapped itself around the city, cornering it to one bank like a long cerulean snake.

There were vineyards, farmlands, orchards, fields of flowers that spun the valley into a stunning carpet of brilliant spring colours…but the prince did not pause to admire the scenery, and instead carried himself onwards with a confident air, led through the city streets by a short redhead king’s man with a shortsword strapped to their side.

High above, an eagle flew, its sharp eye peering upon the prince and his entourage’s entrance into the city. It watched as they made their way up the districts, high into the sky, past the penultimate tier of the city, where many of the finest of Mierche’s temples were located, and into the final, upper District of the Awakened, where the clouds clung to the walls of ancient, ornate buildings. This was where the richest, the most powerful dwelled. The final, highest tier: where the views were the most stunning in the world; the villas and pricey merchant’s stores were painted and tiled with the most exquisite, gorgeous of murals; where the furniture was painted with gold from the mines to the west; where the people dressed only in silks and velvets. It was walled by a tall stone barrier, enterable only through a colossal, red oak double door, where the history of the city was carved and painted with gold, adorned by copper decorative plates, and strengthened with sturdy iron bolts the size of a person’s head. Inside the District of the Awakened, the tiles of the floor were smooth, unlike the rocky paths of stone or compacted dirt in the middle- and lower-class districts. They were marble and inlaid with opal which shone and glittered as the sun rose.

The glorious paths of the District all led, eventually, to the place where the most secure city in Priyana, and perhaps the world, was controlled – the Tower of the Awakened, where all manner of politics had been uttered from within its walls for centuries. The Tower’s top was the highest point of the city. It was always hidden by a cloud except for on the clearest of days. Today, with the early-morning fog encroaching on the doorsteps of the District of the Awakened, the tower was almost totally obscured.

The prince was unaffected by the finery. He continued to be led by his loyalest king’s man to an unoccupied, yet staffed, luxurious villa near the Tower. It was here that the eagle circled the District a few times, then soared back down, perching on the ornate roof of the shopfront across from the royal villa. It cocked its head, peering into the windows for a few minutes and watching the commotions inside, before rising into the air once more, its elegant figure not circling anymore but following the three king’s men that had been ordered to escort their prisoner out of the District and lower, lower, back down through the city, to the most secure prison in the world. The four men disappeared inside for a few minutes, before the king’s men emerged without their prisoner, and headed back to the prince.

The eagle swept up to the District of the Awakened once more, seeing the tier still sleepy in the morning and undisturbed apart from their royal visitor. It swept its wings and soared back to the harbour, to watch the slow shuffle of the line of incomers to the city through the checking points. This was its original task – to watch the early morning activity here. The eagle perched on the top of the flagpole of the aging ferry, and cocked its head to the side so that one keen eye now watched the wooden pier. It absorbed every detail, flicking round every few minutes to glance at the other ends of the South Port. It mainly focused on the incoming passengers and cargo, however. The line was no greater than usual, and bore steady semblance to every other line of incomers throughout each and every day.

The eagle took flight once more, sweeping its great wings for a short while until it landed just after the second checking point, where it could see both middle- and lower-class tiers. It could also see the posters stuck to the walls of the point, warning Priyanis to ‘watch out for the rebellion’ and to ‘make way for the king’s men’. There were portraits of the royal family – the prince’s pale, sallow figure between the king’s similar, but older and lighter-haired face, and the queen’s tall, severe countenance, which bore a pointed noise and thin chin, and thick locks of long black hair drawn back into a magnificent style, all topped with a lavish jewelled crown. Below these framed portraits was a patch of wall, several square metres in area. The brick was completely obscured, as its every inch was covered in posters of criminals, boasting rewards, punishments, and warnings to other civilians and criminals alike. The newcomers to the city took a startled glimpse at the wall, reading just a few warnings before glancing at the militia that stood watch in fear. It was blatant. Many already understood – plenty had been witness to militia and king’s men passing through towns. The responsibility of a king’s man was to be the limb of the king, to be the outreach. They were to portray the king’s intent and personality to the populace. They did this job well, and the tired immigrants at the docks already knew the king well enough through this.

The eagle watched for a few more minutes as the sun rose, casting its light over the stone walls of the city. The people were beginning to awake, and the first few steps were echoing around what would be busy roads in just a few hours. Stores, smiths, services alike were beginning to open in all the districts of the city, and the amount of king’s men patrolling the upper and middle tiers was just beginning to double from its early morning amount. The eagle now took to the sky once more, and it descended in elegant spirals towards the lower-class tiers. Here, the king’s men guarding and patrolling were low – no care for the protection of those in the lower tiers was offered. The streets were paved with unsteady, dust-covered stones, and drunkards and criminals decorated the alleys. The lower class was varied. Some were barred from entering higher tiers – wanted criminals and South Fire Islanders; some were desperately trying to make ends meet with what little they had; some were those who spent a day working in the middle tier and returned at night to a small room in the lower tier; some were those who had given up on life and spent the years Mierche had blessed them with on bottles of mead and wine; and some were those associated with the cause the eagle flew to now – into a run-of-the-mill inn, down a hidden, ancient tunnel, and to an underground bunker that had been unused for half a century, then rediscovered by a burgeoning rebellion.

***

The edge of Hankala, where it began to breach into some form of vague sophistication but still rang clear with disrespect for any common law, was where Rada, Kane, and Nik had found themselves at the dawn after their run-in with the three bandits.

Sitting in an inn that had all windows intact and slightly less sticky furniture was where they were now. Rada was raging a deep internal battle within herself not to give in to her older brother’s admittedly possibly-less-bandit-ridden plan. On principle alone, when they went with _her_ plans, they weren’t _allowed_ to turn out to be worse, because that would mean that Nik would end up being better than her. Which was _ridiculous_. She had to control public opinion. That was one of the few rules Ama had taught her about being a princess, and by the gods she was going to follow it.

“We could do what those bitc– _bandits_ did to us,” Rada said, adding to the ongoing conversation about how to earn their money back.

“That’s immoral.” Nik said, abhorred.

“So?”

“ _So?!_ Rada, I – we – oh, Kane, you’re back.”

Kane slid into the booth next to Rada. He leaned in conspiratorially. “They’ve got check-in points all over the bridge. Guards positioned everywhere. If you _really_ wanted to get in through there, it would take some insane luck.”

“What about along the river?”

“If it hasn’t changed since Ama took me in eight years ago – which I’m sure it hasn’t – then there’ll be guards patrolling every inch of the road. Rada was right – we can’t go through Riverbridge.”

Nik’s face scrunched up in an all-too-familiar expression.

“Oh no. Oh, no no no,” Rada fretted. “You’re thinking of some _stupid_ –”

“What if only _one_ person tried to sneak onboard?”

Rada folded her arms obstinately. “I’m not sitting in some fish barrel at the bottom of a ferry for two days,” she said.

“I’ll do it. It’s _my_ plan.” Nik grinned. “You’d get it wrong, anyway.”

“You gods damn piece o–”

“I’m not sure. It would mean leaving you unguarded. It’s a violation of my oath.”

“Not if I order you to let me.” At Kane’s frown, Nik slipped back into a more serious tone. “But I understand. After all, I’m not the greatest fighter. If I were to be caught I would be in calamitous trouble.”

“So we’ll take the underground route –”

“The only problem, though, is _that_ will cost money as well. Considerably even more than the ferry fee, since it’s an illegal service...”

“And we have none at all.” Rada concluded her brother’s thought. “Let’s tackle that first.”

“No. I mean, yes, but I want to propose something.”

“This is going to be terrible,” Rada told Nik, who appeared not to hear.

“We get some money. Somehow. We pool it, see if we’re going to have enough to pay for not just our passage into the city, but also for any costs after. If we do, then we’ll all go through the underground way. But if we don’t, then one of us will stow away on a ferry.”

“ _No,”_ Kane said.

Rada was quiet for a moment. She chewed her lip, indecisive. “We better get lots of money. Your plan is dumb.”

 ***

It had been eight years since Kane had been in a Soul State arena. A won match was enough to pay for a few day’s food and bed. Hopefully, it would be enough to pay passage into Soul City.

“Alright, lad. Come at me with all you’ve got and I’ll match you up with another competitor.”

Kane assessed the swordsman in front of him. He was a little older than Ama, with a greying beard and fading hair. But he was tall and confident, and Kane had been watching him go up against other competitors with ease for the last half hour. After he knocked them down, he would collect their name and send them to a waiting room through the door behind him, and pair them with another unmatched competitor, giving the two names written on the slip of paper to a woman in iron armour, who would take the match-ups through a door and, assumedly, to the judges and the organisers.

The man was clearly a master, or at the very least supremely skilled. He held himself in an experienced stance, and moved with practised ease. Kane chewed at his lip. He wasn’t very good at assessing his _own_ skill – perhaps this would be a chance to get some feedback, since he hadn’t trained with Ama in a few weeks.

He slid his sword from its sheath at his side, and slipped into stance. The master’s eyebrow quirked up a little at his movement, before diving into battle. Kane reacted with trained precision – dodge the blow, slip behind, throw down, aim sword at neck.

The master rolled onto his back, coming face-to-face with the tip of Kane’s sword. He laughed, unaffected by his easy defeat.

“Only ever been knocked down twice here, and both times today. Makes it easy for me to match you up, then.” He clambered to his feet and shuffled through a small pile of paper slips on his desk. Finally, he found the one he was looking for. He grabbed his pen, dipped it in ink, and he held it above the paper hesitantly.

“Name, lad?”

“Kane.”

“Kane…alright.” He scrawled Kane’s name onto the slip, and passed it to the iron-armoured woman nearby. “Go on ahead.”

Kane pushed the door and emerged into a long hallway. It was quiet, somewhat, but empty and rather claustrophobic from its lack of windows. As he neared the end of the hallway, the sounds of talking grew louder and louder, until he was standing in the entranceway of a large backstage waiting room, where twenty other warriors sat awaiting their matches. It was not from this group that the noise came from, however – it was from beyond the large gate at the end of yet another hallway, past of which a crowd watched and cheered on the two fighters in the arena.

Kane took a seat in the corner, away from the rest of the warriors. He withdrew his sword and a whetstone, and laid the sword on his lap. With that, he sunk into the soothing pre-battle rhythm of the sharpening of his blade.

***

“Do you ever come up with any good plans? Like, at all?” Rada scowled at her brother, who was currently trying to stick a fake moustache above his lip. On the table also sat a gaudy pink scarf and a few strange hats. Rada had no clue where he had acquired these ugly garments.

“This plan is great.”

Rada sighed and leaned her head on her palm and her elbows on the table. “But why does it have to be _me?”_

“Because _I_ know how to pick locks. Besides, catching me is a far bigger deal than catching _you_.”

“You – _say that again, bastard, and I’ll rip your gods damn idiotic head off!”_ Rada fumed.

“We’ve discussed that it doesn’t make sense to call each other bastards, Radomira. Also, chill.”

“No!”

“Look, all you gotta do is play damsel. Which you do all the time anyway.”

“Which _I_ do?! Last time we got into trouble you _lost an arm wrestle with a bandit_ , and the time _before_ that you passed out the entire fight and Kane had to drag you around like a ragdoll! What do you _mean_ I ‘play damsel’?! You –”

“Okay, okay! _I’ll_ play damsel then. Here’s the moustache.” Nik passed her the fake moustache. She slapped it out of his hands. He grinned. “Just kidding. But if _you’re_ taking the money then half my plan has changed. What do you propose, dear sister?”

“Don’t call me that. Anyway, I say we walk in, I’ve got the hood of my cape covering my face. We get the reward money, I send my dagger through the eye of a guard, and we take off.”

“That’s uh. Considerably more _violent_ than –”

“Toughen up, damsel.” Rada smirked. “I’m kidding. How about this? I break you out, and any eyes that get stabbed are just collateral damage.”

Nik raised an eyebrow in confusion, and muttered, “There are still eyes getting stabbed…” Rada ignored this, instead flicking her hood over her face so it was pulled down over her eyes. She took the pink scarf Nik had acquired for his ‘disguise’ and wrapped it around the lower half of her face.

“Let’s go, damsel.”

***

Kane wiped away the drops of sweat that were gathering on the bridge of his nose. He had been waiting for his match for hours now. The sun was fully risen, and the packed, small room had become hot and stifled. He unclipped the chainmail on his arms, letting it drop from his forearms to hang from his shoulders and gather in a silver waterfall at his kness. He peeled the sleeves of the short underneath to his elbows, revealing bandages that wrapped around his forearms and palms. They served as extra padding against the heavy rubbing of the chain mail and the coarse, heavy cloth underneath, as well as protecting his palms from the leather strips wrapped around the hilt of his sword. At present, however, the bandages served only as yet another layer that he was sweating through. It was tempting to unwrap them, however he knew better – it would take far too long to put them back.

He distracted himself from the sweat gathering underneath the bandages by fiddling with a stray thread on his lap, and trying to find something interesting on the wall in front of him. The wall was a filthy cream colour – aged, its paint was cracked, and dirt and grime had formed a filter on it that mutated its colour to a grubby beige. His eyes swept across the other fighters in the room. They were ranged in age and build. Weaponry and armour was just as diverse, as well as the apparent wealth of each fighter. Some were in it for the same reason he was – money. They were hungry, their armour worn and frayed or absent altogether. Some had their eyes closed, mouthing prayers to Mierche, Ninurta, or Mehmed for luck and victory. But others seemed to be in it only for the thrill of a fight, polished armour and impressive swords and axes shining stories of won fights and no need for prize money any more than a proof of their triumph.

As Kane surveyed his fellow fighters, his thoughts wandered back to his childhood in Nahvsenn. He and his fellow street urchins had oft entertained themselves by slipping into the arena audience tiers. The distinct variances in the fighters was nothing unusual, and clearly hadn’t changed in the decade since he had last watched an arena match. Often the most exciting matches were in strange pair-ups. Kane had always loved those – to see and learn how tactics and weaponry and bulks went up against each other, and to study not just how to win but how not to lose, and how to survive. They were thrilling, and in his parentless childhood of muddy lower-tier streets and day-to-day survival, it was a light that he had found in his darkness. It was from these matches that he had first learned to fight, spending sleepless nights and hot spring days like this one using sticks and old, rusty tools and weapons to replicate moves, to teach himself to fight. He had fellow street urchins he ran around with, but he had found, with the quick rise of his skill, his standing amongst the lower-tier kids had risen too. All of a sudden he was the main protective force of a growing group of peasant children, a group which had grown and grown until the day Ama had found Kane fighting in a Nahvsenn arena not dissimilar to the Riverbridge one he sat in now, and had taken him out of the poverty of Nahvsenn and into the service of Prince Nikolai II. It was in that arena that he had thrived – being able to fight against those at his level, challenging himself to a win streak that had lasted, at one point, an entire year. He was nine years old – an exciting opponent in any match, and the audience cheered as he knocked down men three times his size and four times his age. He had become immune to fear from the threat of a larger opponent. Although, his fear of the crowd watching on had never quite dissipated.

Now, eight years after Ama had taken him to Tarrin, Kane wasn’t in this waiting room for an exciting match, not there to train himself or to build some semblance of a career. He was there for the outcoming money from a win. His situation, in a strange way, had taken a turn of perpendiculars.

Kane yawned. His thoughts could only entertain him for so long – he had puzzled over his past enough times already. His eyes began to shutter, feeling the lack of sleep from the past weeks catching up to him as it did when he was still for too long. Just as he was about to drift into unconsciousness, a tap on the shoulder drew him back into the fray of reality. In front of him stood the woman with the iron armour, now sporting a clipboard in her arms.

“You’re up. Come with me.”

Kane stood and followed her, past his fellow waiting fighters and down another long corridor. As they walked, Kane slid his sleeves back down over the bandages and fixed his chainmail to his forearms again. the tapping of the soles of their boots on the tiled floor beating a rhythm alongside the growing sounds of rowdiness from the audience outside. Kane’s stomach flipped a little just as the iron-clad woman began to explain the familiar rules to him.

“Just like most arena matches, you’ll both fight until one of you cannot fight any longer. Whether it be from being knocked out, being killed, or any other reason. The last one standing will win the match. In your match you…” She glanced down at her clipboard, trailing a finger down until she stopped about halfway down the page. “In your match, you’ll be up for a prize of two hundred gold if you win.”

That was definitely enough to get all three of them to Nahvsenn, even via a costlier route. The ferry cost sixteen gold per person. Even if the illegal route cost twice that, the money would fit their trio comfortably.

He focused on using the swing of his hands as he walked to reassure himself by brushing against the three weapons – two daggers and his sword – at his sides. He was more armed now than he had been then, but the feeling of carrying himself to an arena fight was still familiar, even after such a long time. He affixed his eyeline to a spot straight ahead, and drew himself up into a confident gait. He let his hand rest at the pommel of his sword, letting the familiar leather that his fingertips brushed against soothe away any nerves from the echoing sounds of a horde of Priyanis cheering in their. He wasn’t fond of being in the eyes of so many, but he had a duty and he was going to fulfil it.

It was a different reasoning once, but all in all it was the same – there was a purpose in his being here.

Kane and his iron-clad guide stopped behind a set of large wooden gates. The roar of the crowd was almost deafening. Briefly, he brushed his thumb over the pommel and trailed his forefinger over the leather of his sword.

It occurred to him, in a mysterious occasion of a stray thought finding its way into his stream of consciousness like a leaf falling on his shoulder in the autumn, that he hadn’t named the sword yet. This trail of thought was abruptly cut off as the gates were dragged open with an enormous creak, and Kane was thrown into the scene before him.

The sun was almost blinding after he had been inside the window-less waiting room for such a long time. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust for him to see the tiers upon tiers of people sat in the audience, the seating area of which wrapped around the stone-paved battlefloor of the arena in a wide circle. He lingered upon that for a moment, trying to beat down the last nerves his audience conjured in him, before turning his eyes to the space across from him, where at the other end of the arena, standing as if mirrored, was his opponent. He was too far away to see his features clearly. Kane stepped forward into the arena, letting his feet carry him until he stood closer. His opponent had also done so. The sun, glaring into his eyes, masked his opponent’s face for a few moments, before a cloud fell over, dimming the glare, and with a jolt he recognised the familiar countenance.

“You?!”

Before he could say anything else, a huge bell sounded, silencing the crowd. An announcer, voice amplified by the cone he spoke into, introduced the competitors.

“Sixteenth match – Kane versus Ronin!”

***

Rada unfolded the poster and held it obnoxiously over the desk, right in the young guard’s face. The guard, who looked to be only a little older than Kane, leaned away from the sudden action. When he finally focused on the poster he blinked a few times, reading it over before peering back around to her.

“Uh –”

“I believe you’re looking for this kid?” Rada shoved her brother forward, then kicked him in the back of the knees, forcing him to the ground.

“I – okay.” The guard glanced from the poster to Nik a few times, squinting. “Alright. Get up, kid.” Nik drew himself to his feet. The guard unlocked one of the iron-barred jail cells and grabbed Nik’s elbow. He dragged him inside, throwing Nik onto the floor. The guard locked her brother in the cell and returned to his desk. Rada waited, before slamming her fist down. The guard jumped back and stared at her, shocked.

“I believe you owe me money now.”

“I – well, I’m not sure if he’s really –”

“I just put a wanted criminal in your cell and you won’t reward me for it?! What kind of dodgy system have you got going on here? You just go around scamming all the young ladies who do your job for you?”

“Um, well, you see I…” The guard paused as he glimpsed at her eyes. His lip quivered for a moment, clearly witnessing something in her violently angry brown orbs he wasn’t fit to deal with. He sighed. “One moment.” The guard disappeared behind a door for a few minutes, before returning with a bag of coins. “One hundred and twenty-five gold pieces.”

“Where’s the other hundred and twenty-five?”

“You only handed in one of the criminals on the poster, ma’am.”

“I – fine. Fine.” Rada snatched the coins up. “Goodbye.”

She strutted out of the station, shoving the bag into her pocket as she walked. She emerged into the afternoon sunlight and headed towards a small strip of trees and grass, where a wooden bench sat. She sat herself down violently, and watched as a group of young boys tackled each other and rolled around on the mud. With them was a young girl, whose mother was in tears about the girl getting her dress dirty. Rada grinned, finding some solace in the scene.

She shifted, folding one leg over the other. The coins in her pocket clinked in their bag. Her smile turned to a grimace as her thoughts carried her. The sound of the coins had struck her with the realisation that this money was going to be spent on the explicit purpose of saving the man who had treated her as a secondary heir; the man who had told her who to be and how to be, but never why to be. Rada clenched her fists, the pacifying scene of the playing children ebbing away into the background of her thoughts. She couldn’t understand why Nik – and even Kane – didn’t realise who Ama was. How did they not realise that he was playing out his own goals through them?

For the first time, Rada found herself not yearning for the throne. Not in a way that she would let it be seceded to Nik or Leander, but in a way that she and Nik and Kane would cast away Ama’s control and they would shape their own paths. Would it not be better for them to leave the throne? Her father’s rule was over – perhaps it was just a natural progression of history to allow her uncle to rule.

From around the corner, a pair of king’s men appeared. They yelled out, voices rough and cold, towards the children. The children split apart, but the little girl – her hair coated in mud and matted around her face, dress ripped at the hem and leaves sticking from the seams – gave a high-pitched battle cry, before running towards the king’s men as hard as her legs could carry her. She threw herself upon the king’s man, hands flying as she slapped and punched and tried to hurt the king’s man as best she could.

“I know your face! You took our house away, you burned Mama’s paintings… but I’ll protect us this time!”

The other boys had joined in now. Around the scene, the mothers stood in terror, their screamed warnings and pleads for forgiveness from the king’s men drowned by the warrior-like cries of resistance by the group of children clawing at their legs.

One of the king’s men gave a grunt, and with a sharp movement of his leg he kicked the girl to the floor. Rada twitched from her seat, ready to spring into a fight, but she held herself back. Her predicament meant that if she was recognised or arrested, Nik would be left in that jail cell.

The boys rushed to the girl’s side and glared at the king’s man.

“You –”

The king’s man’s lip curled in disgust as he drew closer to the children. “Keep your peasant hands off me.”

As he approached, one of the boys cried out, “Stay away from her!” but was quickly stifled with a rough kick to the stomach. He fell to the ground beside the girl.

The king’s man turned from the cruelty he had inflicted. He rejoined with his partner, and they left, carrying on along whatever path they had been following. After they had disappeared, there was a moment of eerie silence, in which the wind blew the iron stench of the blood coming from the girl’s nose to Rada, before the bleeding girl rose to her feet, shaking somewhat and clutching her side, but expression determined – angry.

“You’ll see, Mama. I’m gonna join SCUR, and I’m gonna make them pay for what they’ve did to us.”

“Milena…”

“I hate them, Mama!” The girl’s cry rang loud and clear in the quiet air. Rada watched as the mother fell to her knees and cradled her daughter in her arms and murmured to her. Rada recognised the two words that fell from her lips – they were simple, but whispered with utmost despair from utmost love:

“I know.”

***

“Can I go a week without running into you?” Kane said, exasperated.

His mysterious rival – _Ronin_ was his name apparently – just stared at him, although when Kane peered closer he could see his eyebrow twitching – most likely in annoyance – underneath one of the dark tresses of his fringe. He could see Ronin’s face much clearer when they were cast in sunlight, not fighting in a forest after the sun had set. Ronin had a pale pallor with a gentle olive lilt. It wasn’t an unhealthy colour, but as it turned out that almost undead paleness was actually his _natural_ colour. Set amongst his pale face, his green eyes seemed to almost glitter in the sunlight like afternoon sun through the leaves of the trees – although his loose fringe, which swept just below his eyebrows, dimmed that considerably. His hair was a dark, dark brown colour, an inch from pitch black, and was trimmed in a manner that was almost up to the standard of king’s men’s. However, on closer inspection his hair was only a slight grade neater than Kane’s own long, wild brown locks.

Ronin had a familiarity to him, one that felt odd – as if Kane knew him from a memory that was muffled from behind a wall. Although, he supposed, Ronin _was_ familiar. He had been the truest match he’d ever faced, the first proper challenge battle he’d sensed in years, yet they _had_ only met twice. Perhaps that was the wall – the feeling that, with the strong desire to defeat Ronin, and to come out the better fighter pumping through his vein, their relationship spanned an eternity.

“It’s an interesting match we’ve got here, folks! As some of you may know, we have the honour of having an esteemed retired king’s man as our evaluator. His name is Kamil Kornek – you’ve probably heard his name from the war histories. Well, retired as he may be, he’s still a fine fighter. In the four years he’s been with us, not once has be been knocked down by an evaluee. But this morning, the great Kamil was knocked down by not one fighter, but two! And those fighters are here now, about to beat it out in our arena.” The announcer continued to rattle on for a few more minutes. Kane had stopped listening a while ago – he could feel the sweat blossoming from his skin again, not just from the heat but also from the presence of the goliath crowd around him. To distract himself from the audience, he focused once more on examining his rival.

They were currently about eight feet away from each other, but from here Kane could see that Ronin was keeping an unreadable neutral persona, his face blank and seemingly unfazed nor interested. It was convincing – it was as if Ronin was above perceiving what was happening around him. But Kane had long since learned to register the slightest of details in his opponent. This was how, when they locked eyes, found himself looking into green eyes that were as keen for the fight as he was; eyes that were evaluating him in the same manner that he was; eyes that contained the slightest touch, a well-hidden shine, of apprehension.

So Ronin also considered them well-matched.

Good.

“I think we’re all more than excited! Fighters in the arena, take stance!”

Kane slipped into stance and drew his sword. He considered his foe. Ronin was a quick fighter. Kane’s strength was in defending. He was faster than the average fighter, but he knew speed wasn’t his strong suit either, and was even less so against Ronin. But Ronin was his opposite as much as he was his equal. No one was unbeatable. Kane could see Ronin’s weaknesses. He wore light armour – admittedly it would be hard to get a hit on him with his fighting style of dodging and staying at a distance rather than defending…but if he were to successfully get a hit, it would be markedly effective

Eyes not leaving Ronin’s, Kane adjusted his standard stance, holding his sword in a defence position, and turning his body slightly so that he would be able to spot and deflect the quick hits Ronin would attempt on him. Across from him, Ronin’s eyes sparked in response to Kane’s shift. He drew himself, dragging one leg back, clearly ready to spring into a leap towards Kane. He whipped out his dagger from his side and spun it in his hand skilfully before holding it readily in front of his face. Kane could see the barely-noticeable twitch of his lips into the slightest of smiles. Kane was grinning like a maniac as well.

“START THE MATCH!”

Ronin leapt towards Kane, the arc of his flight almost gorgeous. Kane sidestepped the attack, but Ronin had used the momentum of his failed lunge to roll back into another stance to swipe at him with his dagger. Kane deflected the hit with his sword. Ronin stepped back. With his free hand he withdrew throwing knife. Kane saw this movement, and on instinct he ran forward, managing to catch his rival unaware with his uncharacteristic sudden shift from defence into offense. He was able to land a swift kick to Ronin’s stomach.

Ronin stumbled back. The shock of the impact had loosened his grip on his knives for just a second, and the throwing knife had clattered to the floor of the arena, while the dagger wavered for just a moment. It was a natural response, the kind of which that could be only hidden and reduced, never eradicated. In that moment, Kane recognised that Ronin, for all his skill, was still only human. He threw himself at Ronin, knocking him to the floor roughly. He threw his own sword aside and instead tore Ronin’s dagger from his grip. They met eyes, and for just a brief moment, the strange familiarity – that gold emotion straining to be comprehended from behind a blurred wall of something solid and unmoving in his mind – washed over him again. He blinked. Ronin did too.

He was thrown back into the fight as Ronin recovered from whatever that moment had been before Kane could, and took back not only the dagger he had just lost but retrieving the dagger Kane had taken from him. Ronin pushed, reversing the position and holding two daggers to his throat, but before Kane could respond, he seemed to realise something, and abruptly yet agilely sprung back to a spot several feet away.

Kane clambered back to his feet. He grabbed his sword and slipped into a defensive stance yet again. Ronin came at him again, now using his own sword. Their blades clashed, and the sound of steel against steel echoed through their ears like the holy chime of the Temple District bells in Nahvsenn.

Ronin spiralled out of their lock and into another hit. Even with a heavier weapon, he kept to quick, evasive combat. The combination of this style against Kane’s own defensive one wasn’t at all unusual, but Ronin’s skill enhanced the fight into something interesting. They danced around the arena, skilled footwork and evasion combining with the flashes of steel in the mid-afternoon sunlight into the performance.

Kane would win this fight. He swore to the gods, that he would win this fight.

There was an opening – a split second, just barely there – and Kane saw it in slow motion as Ronin twisted his body in an evasive dodge away from Kane, leaving one side of his body open. Kane took his chance, and rushed at Ronin. He could see it now – his sword, slicing down on the open spot of his sword arm. It was an injury ripe for the taking.

With a brute yell, he swung, the motion familiar in his hands. His sword flashed in the bright spring sunlight for a second before falling like an executioner’s axe on Ronin’s arm.

With this force, along with Ronin’s thin armour, Kane should have been easily able to cut halfway through his arm. But when the edge of the blade landed, he realised this assumption had been wrong – for where his sword had landed, there was no flesh to cut through.

***

Rada stared at her brother. He was standing behind the iron bars, one side of his face lit by moonlight.

“You gonna let me out of here, dear sister?”

“Yeah, yeah. Just enjoying this.”

“Enjoying what? Oh. Rada, I swear to –”

“I don’t know where the keys are. The guard on duty didn’t have them, and they aren’t anywhere I can find.”

Nik groaned. “They’re probably locked away somewhere.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, searching around for a few seconds before retrieving a lockpick. “Oh well.”

“You just carry that around with you?”

“I bought it in Ahrie.”

“Do you even know how to pick locks?”

“No, but I read about it.”

“Great. You _read_ about it.” Rada sighed. She turned back to the desk and shoved the unconscious guard out of the chair. She took a seat, and rested her legs on the desk. For a while, it was quiet except for the faint scratching sounds and grunts from the cell as Nik attempted to pick the lock.

“This is harder than –”

“How do you think Kane’s doing?” Rada interrupted whatever complaints Nik was about to make. He sighed, before replying measuredly.

“At least competently, I guess. Why?”

“I don’t know. I’ve just been…thinking about him lately.”

“Aren’t you always?”

“No. I mean, yes, but…This is different.”

There was a few more seconds of silence, before Nik responded with, “How so?”

“Well, do you ever think about how he –”

Rada couldn’t finish her sentence, because in that moment, three guards burst through the door. Upon witnessing the sight of two teenagers sitting around casually in their station – one with her feet propped up on the desk and the other attempting to pick his way out of a jail cell, they shifted abruptly into offence.

“Oi!”

Rada immediately rolled off the chair and pushed the desk over. In the small space, the table was close enough that it managed to fall on one of the guard’s toes, and in his surprise she plunged her dagger into his arm. She backed towards the wall and began throwing knives towards the guards. They were grazing their sides, occasionally landing but they didn’t cause enough damage to do much else than delay them.

“Hurry up, Nik!”

“I’m trying!”

“Ugh!” Rada grimaced as one of the guards lunged for her. She darted out of the way, using her new position behind him to give a sharp chop to the back of his neck. He collapsed, and now lay prone on the floor at her feet.

She reached to her pockets for another throwing knife, only to find that she had used them all. She spat out a few curses, before drawing her bow and notching an arrow. She fired the arrow at one of the guards, and in the close quarters it pinned her shoulder to the wall behind. As this guard attempted to free herself of the arrow, the first guard drew Rada’s dagger from his arm. He tossed it to the side and drew his sword. Rada ducked to avoid one of his swings.

“Nik!”

“I’m trying, I’m trying!”

“Try harder!” she yelled, dodging another swing. She rolled towards her dagger and grabbed it, just in time to stand up and catch the sword against it. The guard was pushing down on it. She grunted – this was much harder than Kane made it look. “Nik, I swear to Mierche you –”

And suddenly, the guard was knocked to the side. Now he lay unconscious near the desk. Nearby, Nik stood, somehow wielding the iron cell door as a weapon.

“What did you –”

“Swung the door into him so he’d knock his head on the desk,” Nik replied.

“That’s – we have to go.”

Nik nodded, and they hastily exited the station, bypassing the pinned guard on the way. Rada turned to her and grinned victoriously. The guard reached towards her, but before Rada could stab any eyes Nik grabbed her wrist and they ran, away from the station and away from the new group of guards now pursuing them, coins clinking merrily in her pocket as they went.


	8. Elwen Kazimov

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very, very sorry about the delay on this one. I started university again, as well as also moving into the city. I've been rather pre-occupied with figuring out new bus routes and my new neighbourhood. However I seemed to have settled now. Hopefully I won't be over a week late again.

The family name Kazimov was well-known. Having been serving the efforts of the royal family for hundreds of years, those that bore the name were the kind to put no personal favours above their loyalty to the throne. Their allegiance was to the throne, not the ruler who sat on it.

It was from Kazimov blood that Elwen came.

It had been Elwen’s own reckoning that they would become a king’s man, inspired by a long-held family tradition. Elwen, in their role in the king’s military, was simply continuing the long line of Kazimov king’s men.

Since that choice had been made, their new identity had formed, one defined by its lack thereof. In their young nineteen years, Elwen had already long since sacrificed personal identity. They had shouldered others’ weights all their life, and this had matured them into packhorse to burden and a minimalist to their own self – as was needed by their position.

But the role of a king’s man had not been forced upon them – choice was utterly available at the time of their decision. What had keened them towards the duty was the loyalty with which they had been raised to serve the safety of Prince Leander Pratec of Priyana.

Elwen had met Leander when they were both children. At the end of every autumn, Leander had arrived in the Kazimov estate, a large, sprawling manor at the eastern border of Soul State. It was a day’s ride from Nahvsenn, a week’s from Inurya City, and just a few hours from the Soul State-Inurya border. Leander had stayed there through the winter and joined Elwen under the tutelage of Kamil Kormek, who fulfilled his oath to King Olbert that he would train Leander as a Kazimov, and Elwen thus been witness to the prince’s growth into a capable fighter.

Together they had fought, had strained for warmth in snow, had hiked from the border all the way to Nahvsenn through bitter winds and without a meal. But even as Elwen watched the prince transform their lanky, awkward seven-year-old body to a capable fighter at fourteen, Elwen still knew themself as still more capable in battle than the prince.

And so, after Leander’s training under Kormek ended, Elwen had left Soul State at the age of sixteen, and travelled to Inurya City to vow their service to King Olbert and become a king’s man. Within a year they were declared under high esteem, and a year later they had been assigned to be Leander’s Prince’s Guard. It was a position of great honour, of which they accepted without question. By then they had decided, in alignment with their family’s code, that there would be no indecision within their loyalty to the orders and intents of the throne – if the throne wished them to do something, then they would complete the task.

Elwen Kazimov now stood as a nineteen-year-old Prince’s Guard in Nahvsenn, flanked by two king’s men. They were tying a rolled note to a hawk’s bony leg. Beside them, the young hawker who stood bastion over this hawkery was fretting.

“Y-you don’t have to – I’ll attach it, it’s my respo –”

“Send it to His Majesty King Olbert.”

“K-King?!”

“Yes. To the Inurya Palace Hawkery.”

“I-I-I…” The hawker clenched his fists to take hold of himself. After he seemed in control of his nerves once more he reached for the bird and laid a gentle hand on its wing. His eyes flashed gold for a moment, and he murmured something under his breath to the bird. He then offered it his arm, where it perched itself neatly on his wrist and let itself be carried to the window. With a subtle prod at the paper the boy confirmed the security of the letter tied to its leg, before reaching his arm out the window. The hawk took off with ease, gliding into the air and circling upwards into the sky, before heading east. When the hawker turned back around, the three king’s men had departed his hawkery.

Elwen emerged into the warm morning sunlight, the spring air bouncing off the marble-tiled ground of the Upper Tier in a sparkling glaze. Here, Nahvsenn showed its identity as a stunning, ancient abode. The trees lining the paths were draped in silk scarves of fruitful, healthy colours – plum purples, grass greens, cherry reds, and warm melon golds. It was a sign of the coming Mierche Proletta – the day to celebrate Mierche’s springtime. Elwen had, like most Priyanis, celebrated it as a child, and for a moment the bright colours sent them a flash of festivities from long ago…

***

_The Kazimov estate was adorned with passionate spring colours. The royal insignia was also being flown on the tall flagpole at the top of the hill behind the Kazimov manor – a sign of authority that could be seen for miles. Over a hundred noble families, all of which involved themselves somehow in the royal palace, had flocked to the estate._

_It was common tradition to celebrate Mierche Proletta in Soul State. Inuryans and Dark Landers, and even some Vranians from the Wind Settlement in the Western Mountains made their way to the Soul State in the spring months as Mierche Proletta drew closer. This year, the Kazimov estate would host the royal celebrations of the festival. It was no new feat – the Kazimov’s had served the royal family since the beginnings of its reign over five centuries ago. And so the festivities were glorious, the day was warm, and the fruitful gardens and open courtyards of the estate had been transformed into a breathtaking wonderland. In the air, the drifting fragrances of blooming flowers, ripe and delicious fruits, and innumerous spices wafted about. Amongst the many paths of the Kazimov gardens there were magicians; dancers; and warriors spinning Soul Energy into elaborate glittering performances._

_Silken traditional-style dress was the code, and there was every bright and warm colour silk imaginable in the large main courtyard, where an ensemble of musicians performed on a raised platform. Below them was where the guests danced – where skirts bloomed like a petal to the morning as the women spun, and scarves tied to the men’s wrists fluttered in the air like butterflies._

_At nine years old, Elwen was still too short to see much of anything without being trampled, and in the crowd of dancing nobility and swirling colours, they had shyly decided upon keeping themselves under one of the scarf-wrapped trees. It was a part away from the commotion, as much as they could separate themselves from the silken-clad nobles. Their only participation to the colour of the Mierche Proletta festivities had been one forced by their father, reluctantly tying a scarf to an ancient pear tree earlier that morning._

_As of then – and as of almost every festival and party their esteemed parents celebrate – they wished to be elsewhere. Ideally, thrusting a sword into a straw dummy in the training yard. But their parents had ordered they stay amongst the festival, and so they stayed, longing for the day to be over and hoping that at the end of it all they could squeeze in a quick spar against Kormek._

_It was a servant that found Elwen, a plump old maid who grabbed them suddenly by the wrist._

_“Mastor Elwen! Mastor Filip has need of you.”_

_Elwen snatched their hand away. “I’ll come of my own accord. My father can wait.”_

_“It’s – it’s very urgent…”_

_“Unless the world is ending –”_

_“It’s the royal family.” The maid paused, then leaned in. “They’ll have our heads if you don’t make yourself present to them at once.”_

_Elwen groaned. “What exactly is this all about, then?” and they strutted impatiently to their father’s offices indoors._

***

“Be on your guard.”

“How dangerous could it be? This is the Temple District during a religious season.”

Elwen slowed down their pace so they were stepping alongside the protesting king’s man. “Where are you from, soldier?”

“South Inurya.”

“Exactly. You don’t understand this city, nor do you understand Soul State mentality. Soul City is well-known for having a growing rebel issue in the last decade. You would be wise to _be on your guard,_ as I _ordered_ you to, soldier.”

“Inurya City has a ‘rebel issue’ as well, if you remember well, _sir_. So I’m not as naïve as you want me to be.” The soldier narrowed his eyes. “And what rank do you have above me? A Royal Guard can only offer orders in rare situations. You can’t order me to do anything or think your way. So, as I was saying. No one would attack someone in a sacred place like this.”

Elwen’s mannerism seemed unchanging in spite of the king’s man’s outburst. Instead they were silent for just a second before –

In a flash of movement, the soldier had been knocked violently to the ground. Elwen stood over them, boot on their chest.

“Not if they consider their targets an affront to Mierche.”

Elwen’s hand casually gripped their shortsword, where at its point a crimson drop of blood quietly dripped to the ground. In all its smallness,  it contrasted violently against the crisp marble tile of the Temple District. The soldier now bore a thin, bleeding scratch on their cheek. “Soul Energy dominates this city. The people are one of strong feeling. Consider all civilians a possible threat.”

Elwen wiped their sword on the leather of their pants and slipped it back into its hilt. They stepped off the king’s man, who clambered to his feet, nursing his cut cheek.

“Neither you nor I can use Soul Energy. In your training in Inurya you will have seen a few combatant Soul Energy users. Here, your chance of fighting one is much higher. And many of those with non-combatant Soul Energy Streams will have found a way to incorporate their energy into an offensive or defensive skill. Soul State is a place of fighting spirit. Mierche is not just the god of Soul but also the patron of the fighter. And Soul City is the centre of all of this. If you don’t understand this then this city’s rebels will do far worse to you and to the Prince than _that._ So, as I said, soldier. _Keep your guard up_.”

***

_“Keep your guard up.”_

_In their father’s office, five eyes examined Elwen’s answer from the steady gaze on their face. It was confident and they stood, seemingly, with no qualms in the presence of the King, Queen, and Prince of Priyana._

_“Is this it then? Is this all Kormek has to offer?” Queen Kamena narrowed her eyes, her cold gaze pinning Elwen to the spot. Elwen forced their stance to be unchanging, even though they wanted to turn their head away from the Queen’s almost wordless interrogation._

_“This is what the Kazimov prodigy has from their training under you, Kormek? A silly little mantra?” Olbert frowned, and his bony fingers drummed the armrest of Elwen’s father’s desk chair._

_“It’s Elwen’s.” Kormek finally spoke._

_“Hmm?”_

_“Elwen is indeed the Kazimov prodigy. They needed little further training in basic fighting. Elwen is past general rules, Your Majesty. They are now developing their own fighting style. And Elwen has summed it up for you all,” Kormek said._

_“And would you train our Leander the same, were he your student?”_

_“I would train him as a disciple in his own right. Not as to Elwen.”_

_“Is that so?” The Queen crossed her legs, left over right, and her cold grey stare continued to etch itself further and further past Elwen’s façade._

_“I would not train him as the prince, either, Your Majesty. He would be a student, and would be treated nothing more special by me than Elwen is treated.”_

_“Kormek, my son is the prince and he will be treated as such, no matter your –”_

_“Leander will come here for every winter and endure your training for the season. Treat him as he is – I see him as no more fit to be heir than the palace maids. He’s a brat. Use the chill to toughen him up, Kormek.”_

_Elwen blinked in surprise. They eyed the prince, examining his reaction to his own father’s words. His gaze had remained respectably downcast. It had not changed since Elwen had entered the room. But at his side, a single one of his small fists had clenched tight by his side. It was the look not of a prince, but of a humiliated child._

_“Then we are agreed that Prince Leander will train under Kormek alongside my eldest child, Your Majesty?” Filip Kormek broke the moment of silence._

_“We are agreed, Kazimov. Let’s discuss the details, shall we?”_

_“Yes. Elwen, how about you take Leander around the estate?”_

_“Yes father.”_

_Elwen guided the prince out the door and down the long corridor of the second floor of the Kazimov manor, and back out into the flowering, colourful gardens outside. Somehow, it felt different than before with Prince Leander walking alongside them to their left._

***

_Elwen was twelve when it happened the first time. Leander nine._

_The snow had come late that year, but it had come heavy. The fires ran all day and night, and the carpet of cold white outside the windows was enough the keep anyone indoors._

_There was no fireplace in the training yard. The snow fell on the fencepoles around Elwen, Leander, and Kormek, unfettered by a roof nor heat. It only melted when it touched their cheeks._

_Kormek had lead them back inside an hour from frostbite, and told them that they would be spending the next two weeks trekking from the Kazimov estate to the foot of the Nahvsenn Mountains._

_And so they had._

_The cold was cruel, the wind crueller. On days where it didn’t snow, the skies would be deathly clear. Leander’s pale skin became streaked with red sunburn, and Elwen’s joints felt like a frozen hinge._

_They were hungry and tired, and the frozen ground had little to give in terms of a bed. They would set their blankets and tents only to have the snow melt under their bodies and run through the fabric. The forest was a cemetery – there was no sound of life, and they only saw tracks a few times on a rare clear day because the snow would fall so often. The only thing to hear was the wind howling snowstorms through the ancient Soul State forest, and the only thing to see was cold white._

_On the fourth night, Elwen had awoken to find the prince curled up like a baby, barely breathing lest the air freeze his lungs. He was asleep, deep asleep, and when Elwen felt the pulse at his wrist it was slow. Elwen shrugged off their outer cape and had wrapped it around the prince._

_In the morning, Leander wouldn’t wake. He was alive, still curled, still asleep. For hours Elwen waited, waited until the sun was directly overhead, and the prince did not wake. The young prince’s body had shut down to almost nothing._

_They couldn’t stay here, in the snow, in the middle of the forest. They had to keep moving. But Leander was not waking up, no matter how desperately Elwen tried to shake him._

_And so that evening the sun set over Priyana, and Elwen carried the prince. They stopped only to eat occasionally, desperately trying unsuccessfully to force food into Leander. It was then that they realised they would have to reach Nahvsenn before the prince starved to death. And so Elwen carried the prince on their back, and did not sleep and barely sat down to rest. Five days later they arrived at the gate of a temple at the foot of a mountain. An elderly priest opened the gate to see Elwen collapsed, hungry, tired, worn out, and inches from death._

_The Prince had survived. Elwen only barely. But they did._

_And so this was how Elwen had come to the realisation, the realisation that if the royal family was saved, then the Kazimov would be spared._

_If the prince survived, then Elwen would be spared._

_But it was not just this that had kept Elwen by Leander’s side. It was not just this that had them make the choice to starve and freeze and suffer over abandoning the prince._

_Elwen did not serve the throne like a Kazimov. Elwen did not serve the throne with an impartiality to the person they were Guard to. Elwen served the throne with a vehement loyalty stemming from something deep within their heart that had formed over those many winters with Leander in the Soul State._

_***_

Nahvsenn Mayor Stoya Bosol was chatting amongst a crowd of outgoing Nahvsenn socialites, enjoying the company of the wealthy men and women he lived alongside as he perused the offerings to Mierche laying at the foot of a great marble statue of the god. The statue’s eyes and armour were carved from gold and sparkled with patterned adornments from embedded yellow garnets. Its ten-metre height was stunning and holy.

Elwen paid it no mind as they approached the mayor, and with no hesitance nor regard for the several members of influential families involved in the conversation they thus interrupted.

“Mayor, I am here of behalf of Prince Leander of –”

“Ah! Is this a Kazimov? I can tell – it’s the flaming hair and the height! Do join us, we’re discussing the Proletta.”

“I don’t have time for talk. I am summoning you to the presence of the Prince of Priyana. Do you understand this, Mayor Stoya?”

“Ah, but I’m sure he understands the importance of a leader talking to those who matter, Kazi –”

“As the Prince’s Guard, I stand to represent the Prince and the throne’s intents from afar. The Prince intends to have you in his presence immediately, and I will not hesitate to employ force in order to complete my duty, Mayor.”

“Oh, uh, but I –”

Elwen motioned, and one of the king’s men shoved a knee into the mayor’s stomach. The mayor doubled over, wheezing and trying to catch his breath. The other king’s man then assisted in dragging the mayor out of the Temple and into the streets, where a simple carriage awaited. The king’s men shoved the mayor inside, and climbed aboard. One took the reigns, while the other positioned themselves beside, and stood up, on guard for any potential attackers.

Elwen climbed in after the mayor. There was no room to stand inside, and so they sat down across from the mayor. The carriage started moving.

“I’m glad you’ve decided to meet the Prince at such short notice, Mayor. It’s important to respect the Prince utmost. Consequences happen to those who don’t, you understand.”


	9. Kane and Ronin

With a brute yell, he swung, the motion familiar in his hands. His sword flashed in the bright spring sunlight for a second before falling like an executioner’s axe on Ronin’s arm.

With this force, along with Ronin’s thin armour, Kane assumed he should have been easily able to cut halfway through the arm. Kane’s blade was sharp and well-tempered, and it cut through the leather armour on his opponent’s arm like cheese.

Yet underneath that armour came not the slide of blade into flesh but the _clang_ of steel on steel. Through the slit he had made, he could see the dark grey reflection of Ronin’s forearm, smooth and polished.

When the edge of his blade landed, Kane realised he had been wrong. Where his sword now lay, there was no flesh to cut through. In that moment, time stood still, and the spring sun bore down upon the blinding reflection of Kane’s own mistake.

Ronin’s right arm, from elbow to fingertip, was a prosthetic. Not just any prosthetic – Ronin carried the metal hand like it was light as a ream of silk, and when the echoing vibrations from the impact had faded into a whisper, the hand transformed from metal to what seemed to be a knot of branches.

Kane’s certainty - his confidence in winning which had powered the swing of the sword – had been thrown from the rafters and smashed to the floor. There had been a certain rhythm; a tandem with which he fought with Ronin that insinuated an equal footing and knowledge of each other’s moves as well as the other. It was a true rivalry in its similarities, now gone. Or had it never been there at all? Was it just a perception of Kane’s and only Kane’s?

The _clang_ was still echoing in Kane’s head when Ronin pulled away. He stepped back. Kane’s sword swung down and away. He held his own sword in his other hand.

The movement pulled Kane away as well: away from his thoughts and back into the physical notions of their current predicament. He blinked. He was still somewhat distracted by the strange, morphing prosthetic, but he could put that aside easily. Now was the time for focus.

Ronin’s prosthetic arm seemed to have stiffened in a kind of half paralysis after being hit with Kane’s force. It was not flesh, yet clearly it wasn’t immune to everything. Kane hadn’t succeeded in giving a significant injury to Ronin, but he had still put him at a disadvantage, at least for now.

With a renewed vigour, Kane lunged, stepping back into the fight eagerly. It wasn’t over just yet. He had already prepared himself for Ronin either dodging or connecting his own sword with Kane’s, which was now sweeping towards him once again. Surely Ronin wouldn’t be able to hold against the pressure that Kane put on the sword if he couldn’t use his weapon two-handed? Whether or not this blow landed on flesh or not mattered not – it would still be another disadvantageous action against Ronin. All he had to do was land it – and Kane was fast adapting to Ronin’s quick movements.

As Ronin noticed Kane charging once more towards him, he seemed to become, finally, equally surprised as Kane. Kane could see it in his eyes – a sort of inevitability of the struggle of a real threat. Parrying or defending himself from the hit would be less effective with his stuck arm, and if he dodged Kane would be able to expect and counter it anyway. Something hot and euphoric spiked within Kane. The third time was the charm – finally the two rivals would end a battle, and it would end with Kane’s win for sure. He lifted his sword, preparing to swing. Ronin would dodge, and Kane was ready to adjust. This was it.

With a simple, inexplicable movement, Ronin stabbed his sword into the earthen floor of the arena, leaving the tip buried and the rest standing vertical, like some kind of odd steel sapling growing from the dry earth of the battleground.

Ronin now stood behind the sword, body unreadable once again. He rested his hands on the pommel atop the ornate hilt.

Unlike before, Kane was determined not to allow Ronin’s unexpected movements to distract him. Instead of taking a moment to regard whatever Ronin’s intent here might be, he continued to approach Ronin steadily. Even if this was a trap somehow – although he couldn’t ponder what kind – without his sword, his opponent was significantly disarmed. He stepped into stance and began to swing.

Or he tried to.

Around five feet from Ronin, his legs stopped moving. He tried to move again, but it was as if his toes were being dragged into the earth.

Beginning to feel a sense of vague panic, he attempted to pull one foot in front of the other once more. It was to no avail, and in his confusion and his unease, the screaming bubble of the crowd’s yelling began to press down on him. It was as if a landslide was coming right for him, but he couldn’t move, and in front of him Ronin wouldn’t move, and his mind was retreating back into a childish fear as Ronin’s pale, tall figure began to blur and the sounds of the crowd all glaring down upon him began to grow, louder and louder, until it domed over him, a claustrophobic wall of solid sound.

He desperately heaved at his leg. He found himself collapsed to his knees, lying face first on the dirt. He tried to roll over, but his feet were still stuck to the ground like a bee in its own honey – he in the hubris of his own confidence and certainty – and now he was tangled together in Ronin’s trap.

***

“Meh…Hankala is _boring_ , Nik.”

Nik grunted in response. He was limping slightly – probably from Rada kicking him in the back of the knees that morning – as they wandered around the dreary grey streets. It was a nice spring day, and the afternoon sunlight would have made any other town look at the least a tad homely. With the tattered mess of joyless streets and buildings that was Hankala, it only highlighted the grime on the windows in a different way.

They passed what could have been an either sleeping or dead bandit on the side of the road. Rada kicked a loose pavement stone as they walked by. It made a loud clattering noise as it rolled down the street. There was no response from the bandit.

Rada almost hoped that the trio of bandits that had taken their money would reappear. Then at least _something_ would happen.

“Why aren’t we being attacked by anyone? Isn’t this area supposed to be like… _dangerous_?”

“Bandits have a network. Everyone here knows that we don’t have any money anymore.”

“But we do!” Rada shoved the bag of coins in front of her brother’s face.

“Be quiet!” he hissed. He grabbed the bag and shoved it back in Rada’s pocket. “We need to stay low while we look for how to get to Nahvsenn.”

Rada stopped, Nik copying in response. She turned to him, scowling, and shoved her finger roughly into her brother’s chest. “You said you _knew how.”_

“I said I knew _of_. There’s a difference, Radomira.”

“Stop looking down your nose at me and explain _how_.”

“I already said I don’t _know how!”_

“Be quiet!” Rada slapped her hand over Nik’s mouth. “You need to know _how_ and not just _of_ as soon as possible.”

Nik pushed her hand away. “I _know_ , and that’s what we’re _doing!_ I’m just – it’s – well, the success rate for finding information is very low right now.”

“Well use that little brain of yours and get the success rate or whatever to one thousand.”

“That’s not how it works, for starters I never established any kind of scale –”

“Clues, Nik! You got any hints?”

“I…um…”

Rada raised an eyebrow expectantly.

“Uh, well…the book I read – although it was very old, which decreases its reliability _quite_ considerably, which was why I didn’t –”

“Nikolai, I swear to Mierche –”

“Mining! They said it had links to the mining, up in the mountains. We can investigate there. I suppose.”

“ _Finally._ ” Rada began strutting confidently towards the towering, crooked figures of the Nahvsenn Mountains, which loomed in the background of the eastward scenery of Riverbridge and its surrounding townships. “You ever read a book on not being an idiot, Nik?”

***

It was an almost surreal sense of enormous anxiety that bubbled up inside Kane when he saw what was keeping him down. Out of his mouth came a hollow laugh that sounded more like a shriek, or a moan, or a warped cry of complaint. But there was no real comparison he could truly make, because he could only feel the sound rattle in his chest. He couldn’t actually _hear_ his own voice, only the crowd around him, screaming, that tidal wave of noise still pressing the air out of his chest, and he couldn’t roll out of the way of anything or curl into a foetal position to protect himself from the crowd because wrapped around Kane’s ankles and creeping their way up his legs, clutched so tight he could feel his feet numbing, were several thick, deep green vines.

It was as if they were trying to rip his legs off.

No, not _as if_. They _were_.

With a sudden burst of adrenaline, he drew a dagger from his side. In clumsy, restrained movements he began to hack at the vines. As their own defence mechanism, the vines writhed around, and when his hands went near them he had to deftly manoeuvre his way out of their grasp as they attempted to capture his wrists and pull off his fingers. After what felt like a year in the pits of punishment, he rolled away and sprung back to his feet, free of the vines. He faced Ronin, panting, clutching the dagger in his hands. His muscles were straining from the uncomfortable position with which they had just worked in, and with the sudden return of blood to his feet his toes felt hot and strangely weightless.

Yet everything now seemed to be clearer. It was as if his conscious thought had become on par with his instinct. The sides of his vision seemed had been unlocked from behind a door, and in his periphery he could see vines dancing around the edges of his eyesight. Kane dodged their attempts to grab at him, and noticed Ronin still standing just a few feet away at his sword.

Kane’s sword – still nameless, a stray thought reminded him – had been swallowed in a writhing mound of vines now. There was no getting it back.

In a moment of spontaneity motivated in parts by his own instinct to be unpredictable in a fight, and in other parts by frustration with Ronin, he threw all debate of other strategic options out. Instead, he let his anger carry him. He dived towards Ronin, who, seeing Kane running towards him with no sense of hesitation nor plan, had started moving away from his sword.

Kane heard the soft _“umph!”_ that Ronin gave as they impacted the ground. Kane stood back up as Ronin did. They locked eyes, and Ronin drew a dagger, staring at Kane with driven intent.

Kane broke the pause when he wildly attempted to wrestle the dagger from Ronin. Ronin danced out of the way, once again out of reach. Kane wasted no time in trying again. He found himself face to face with the floor again. He could feel the ground moving underneath him as a vine dragged him by the ankle. The chainmail shirt he wore was being dragged towards his chin. He could feel the thin wool undershirt tearing and his skin grazing. Dirt flew up his nose. He squeezed his eyes shut to save his vision. Blindly, he spun back around and hacked the vine off. He felt his foot free and he sprung back up.

He wiped the dirt from his face. With this motion, he swept away a considerable layer of grimy sweat that had formed on his brow.

How long was this fight going to take?

Ronin was standing still once more. Kane felt something brush at his ankle, and he abruptly stepped away from a vine’s attempt to reclaim his leg. In the moment of semi-stillness, he realised his own heavy panting and aching limbs. For the first time in a long time, he just wanted to sit down, to forfeit the battle to rest for just five minutes.

When Ama first trained him, he had wanted to rest as well. An hour in the blazing summer sun, up on that hill in Tarrin in the dry still heat, waving a sword around, a child defending himself from the offence of a former King’s Guard.

 _“There is no time to tire. No time to rest.”_ Ama’s voice emerged, deep and booming. In Kane’s memory, his voice sounded from all sides around, from over the hilltops and from deep within his heart.

Kane tucked his own soreness away to the back of his mind, and once more, and again, and again and again and again, in an endless stream of rough attacks and dodges that grew messier and messier and messier as they repeated, he tried endlessly to defeat Ronin.

***

“You think this is gonna help, huh? Just waiting around these dingy miners’ shacks until you get a revelation about illegal passage into Nahvsenn?”

“ _You_ were the one who –”

“Hey! You!” A grey-haired man with a crooked back turned his head toward Rada’s shout. “Yes, you! Come here.”

The man began to move towards the siblings. Rada waited five seconds before walking to the elder herself.

“Know anything about a secret underground route to Soul City, old man?”

“Speak…to yerrrr ellllllderrr’ss poliiitelyyyy, kiiiid…”

Rada’s questioning gaze switched to a death glare. “What do you know about the illegal route?”

 “Well…iiiiffff yooouuu –”

“Talk and I’ll give you a gold coin.”

This seemed to intrigue him. “I…hhheeeeeaaaarrrr…”

“Faster, grandpa!”

“I…hheeaarrrd thaa –”

“Faster! This coin’s a gods damn nice coin!”

The old man blinked as he stared up at the princess of Priyana’s insistent gaze. “I…”

“Yes?”

“Rada, maybe you should –”

“IheardofafellowattheJarhaInn.”

“At the where?”

“AttheJarhaInn!”

“I said _‘where?’!_ No coin if I can’t hear you!”

“At the Jarha Inn! At the Jarha Inn! At the Jarha Inn! At the Jarha Inn! At the…” The toothless gentleman prattled on. Rada turned to her brother triumphantly.

“See? No waiting around if you aren’t an idiot.”

“I’m not – I wasn’t…I don’t…”

Rada had already turned back to the old man, who was still yelling into blank space. She pressed a shiny coin into his palm with a sweet smile. “Thank you, sir.”

***

After another gods-knew-how-many turns of attacking Ronin and dodging Ronin’s vines, Kane finally noticed something about Ronin’s current fighting style.

It was the constraint of what seemed like fleeting movements finally dawning on Kane that made him pause.

The vines rushed towards him in a massive, writhing green wave. In a moment of pure gut instinct, instead of flitting out of the way and jumping to another spot, he took three steady steps back. He stood in place and hoped to Mierche he was right.

The vines flooded towards him, hungry arms grabbing. For a moment, Kane’s heart leapt to his throat, before the vines stopped abruptly a foot away from him. They seemed to hit some unseen barrier, and shrunk back towards the sword in the centre of their radius – for Kane was right – it was a _radius_. The vines could appear and tangle within a ten or so metre space from the sword, but past that they became weak-willed.

The vines disappeared into the earth, reappearing to wrap around the sword. Kane locked eyes with Ronin, who shifted slowly into stance, not taking his eyes away. Kane shifted too. His muscles burned again – now quietly still again, he was noticing it once more. He was panting, his throat was dry, and his head spun with the heat and the sweat and the layers of armour he wore. Yet this time it all faded easily into nothing. He could taste it – a tension in the air. Their fight was approaching its end, and victory was walking across the wide arena towards the two warriors.

It was still fair game for either of them.

Ronin moved.

Lightning quick, in sharp liquid movement like a cat, Ronin moved away from his protective radius. Behind him, the vines flocked to the edge. They reached out for him like kittens to their mother.

It was a tentative, soft touch, then, that landed on Kane’s shoulder.

Kane turned back to Ronin. In his opponent’s eyes was something odd – confusion, apology, triumph? – and in his hands was…nothing. His prosthetic arm had healed from its temporary shock paralysis, and now gripped Kane’s wrist in a steel vice. Ronin’s daggers were both resting in their sheaths at his sides, and he had taken his glove off his other hand. It lay on the dusty earth behind him, discarded. Ronin reached with his flesh hand towards Kane. Something kept Kane compelled to stay there – probably fear that Ronin might tear off his arm if he moved.

Ronin’s touch on his shoulder was gentle and feather light. When his fingers touched the chainmail, a kind of strange enchantment took them both over.

To Kane’s utter shock, he smiled. It was a soft, small change, almost not there at all, but undeniable. It was this that threw Kane abruptly back into a less spellbound conscience.

But it was too late. From where Ronin’s hand was on his shoulder, thick branches had begun to grow, twisting and rooting themselves into the soil, pulling him down and trapping him. He was on his knees now, one wrist stuck in Ronin’s grasp and the other one being attached firmly in a tight web of branches.

Ronin moved his hand away from Kane’s shoulder. For a brief second, he trailed his fingers across the exposed line of skin at Kane’s neck, before slipping the touch away. Now all he held of Kane was his wrist in his metal hand, which reached up to him. Kane self-consciously realised they must be figured in the kind of pose found in temple artwork that depicted holy connection.

Kane tugged his hand back towards himself. It fell away from Ronin’s steel hand with surprising ease. It rested at his side, where branches spun themselves around his fingers and locked the limb into place. There was a tree growing around him, rooting him to the floor and pressing all around him. But all he felt was a strange nostalgia as he and Ronin gazed at each other, breathless and aching.

“The match goes to Ronin!”

The small smile on Ronin’s face slipped away.

Now the loser, Kane watched as Ronin walked away. He bent down, retrieved Kane’s sword, and returned to Kane. His face was steeled once more into a blank mask as he gave Kane’s sword back to its creator, and, without a word, turned to leave the arena, grabbing his discarded glove on the way out.

Kane remained on his knees, sword thrust into the earth in front of him, wrapped in a suffocating cape of nature.

_“There is no time to tire. No time to rest. Nikolai’s destiny awaits your service, Kane.”_

Ahead of him, Ronin’s silhouette was walking away. It paused for a moment, and the branches around Kane slipped away, softly brushing the tips of Kane’s fingertips as they crept back into the earth. Ronin disappeared into the dark halls leading out of the arena.

“I’m sorry, Ama…”

_“You must never lose. Even in loss, you must win in some form. Total loss is disloyal. And so, there is no time to tire.”_

But now, with his sword a grasp away, and his body untethered, Kane could no longer bring himself to fight any longer. His limbs ached, his heart beat fast with adrenaline now filtering out. He could only reach out to grip the hilt of his sword, still warm from Ronin’s touch, and sheath it back at his side, before he lay down, side on the ground, and the world slipped from his conscience.

***

“You lookin’ for a drink?”

“Um, no thanks, we aren’t even –”

“Sure.”

“Righto.”

Nik banged his head against the bar, immediately regretting it when he realised how sticky it was. He groaned and rubbed furiously at his forehead. “Rada, we can’t _afford_ …well, much at all. But definitely not mead.” Nik then called out to the surly bartender. “Cancel that, thanks.”

“Whatever you say, kid.”

“You’re no fun, Nik. Let me hang out and drink in shady bars if I want to. Ama isn’t here to tell us what to do. This isn’t princess-ly at all. I love it.”

“I thought your eternal quest was to be queen?”

“Different from being a princess. When you’re a queen, you make the rules, you see. When you’re a princess, Ama makes the rules. And Ama isn’t here.”

“Did you forget we’re getting Ama back? That’s why we’re here. Wherever this is.” Nik pulled out his map. The ink twisted around the page, melting into place to transform itself into the streets of –

“Onicani, Riverbridge. The Jarha Inn, in Onicani.” Rada was peering over at the map. “The girls in Tarrin used to tell all sorts of ghost stories at sleepovers, you know.”

The memory of the way Nik acquired his map flickered past momentarily. He pushed the thought away. “You only went to one before they kicked you out for throwing a knife at the milkmaid’s daughter.” Then under his breath he muttered, “And I was the one who had to hide the entire affair from Ama.”

“Well, that’s one more sleepover than you. So, anyway, legend says the mountains of Nahvsenn are haunted.” Rada gestured towards the crooked grey lines at the edge of the map. “Most of the ghost stories I heard were from the mountains.”

“Ghosts aren’t real, Radomira.”

“Gods are real, who’s to say ghosts aren’t?”

“I’ll say, because gods aren’t real either. They’re imagined guidelines represented as a character.”

“Well, I’ve recently had a revelation. Gods _are_ real, dear brother. And they ruin your dress.” She held up the long red decorative apron on her lap. The end was charred.

“What are you talking about? I thought you said it accidentally dipped into the campfire.”

“Nope. I met a god, and she ruined my dress. Next time I see that hag, I’m burning _her_ dress. See how she likes that. Although…”

“Are you crazy? You think your dreams are real now?”

“I know my dreams are real. Oh, by the way,” Rada turned to him, sly cat-like grin painted atop her thin face. “I solved our missing lead mystery.”

“What?”

“While you were busy studying that map, I was watching our backs. Shady bars aren’t known for being safe. Anyway,” Rada gestured towards a table in a far corner, where a pair was sat huddled close together. They blended in with their dingy surroundings about as much as Rada and Nik did. “That’s our lead.”

“How so? They’re just…a couple.”

“A fleeing couple. Maybe if you looked away from your books and maps for a day you’d learn to read body language.”

Nik glanced over again. The couple’s capes had dark hoods and they had sat themselves far from the view of the window. “I suppose…but that doesn’t give a certainty that they know where the underground connection is.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

The couple’s clothes were frayed and dirty. They had been in hiding for some time. Nik chewed at his lip. He turned back to his map and gazed at it, not really registering anything on the parchment. “So far, we’ve been the only ones in this inn. That old man said the guy would be _here_ specifically. It can’t be those two…”

“They’re waiting for our guy as well.”

“So we wait…even longer now?”

“Well, now we know for certain that we’re in the right place. This inn surely doesn’t get too many customers.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” Rada said, hesitantly. “My last plan got us attacked and our money stolen.”

“Are you admitting your own mistakes? Am I dreaming?”

His sister waved her hand absentmindedly towards him. “Yeah, yeah. Enjoy your moment of superiority.”

“Oh, I will. I –”

Before Nik could continue, the door to the inn swung wide open. The five occupants inside jumped and turned to stare in bewilderment at the tall, heavyset figure making his way to the bar. As he got closer, the lamplight inside the room shone upon the worn-down etchings on his steel armour and the warhammer on his back. Nik recognised half of a worn-away King’s Men’s crest on his right pauldron as he leaned towards the bartender.

“A pint, Tarvo.” His voice was confident, rough and deep. It was similar to Ama’s, so much it was almost painful for Nik to hear.

“Righto.”

After a moment, the warrior turned to Nik and Rada, then tilted back a little to glance at the couple in the corner. The innkeeper set a sturdy pint of ale on the greasy wooden countertop. The warrior took a swig and directed his eyeline towards the window. After observing the empty street outside, he spoke.

“Passage is forty gold each person. If you die, I’ll take whatever’s valuable off your body, and I ain’t gonna haul it outta that cave and bury you.” A few minutes passed as the warrior finished his drink. He set down a shiny gold coin on the counter alongside his empty tankard. “Meet here midnight tonight with the gold if you’re in.” With that, he strode confidently out of the inn and back into the streets, heading north-east towards the forest at the base of the mountain.

Nik grimaced.

“Five gold. That’s all we’ll have left.”

“Four, because of me. It’s not enough…” Rada murmured.

“I – no. It _is_ enough, Rada. We’ll figure out what to do once we get to Nahvsenn. For now, we must go step by step. Besides, we still have to meet back with Kane. He probably won us some gold as well.”

“But if he…” Rada frowned, then closed her eyes. When she opened them again, her expression was unreadable. “I’ll go get Kane. I remember where that arena is.” She pulled their bag of coins out of her pocket and slipped it into Nik’s hand. She gave her brother a small smile, eyes distant, before sliding off her stool and out of the bar.

***

When Kane returned to Nik, it was without extra coin and without Rada.

“Kane?”

“She…I couldn’t…”

“Kane?!”

“She just…disappeared. I don’t…I’m so sorry, Nik. I’m so, I…” Kane dropped to his knees. “I’ve failed you. I’ve failed Ama. And now I’ve failed Rada.”

“What do you mean she _disappeared?!_ Was she kidnapped? Arrested? Kil…” Nik couldn’t bring himself to complete the word.

“No, she – I – she said she would only be a second around the corner, just going to the bathroom, and she _wasn’t_ …And I searched and searched, Nik, I really did. But she wasn’t there. She was just…gone.”

“Just gone?! Nobody just…She can’t have…”

“I’m sorry, Nik. I’m so sorry.”

“We have to keep –”

“Alright. Hand over the gold and we’ll get going.”

Nik spun around to see a group of four other travellers handing the warrior from earlier their gold. The warrior caught his eye.

“You coming, kid? I only do this a few times a year, you know.”

“I…” Nik gulped. He looked from the warrior to Kane, and then towards Riverbridge. “Rada…”

“Nik, we can –” Kane started, but Nik had made up his mind.

He stepped towards the warrior and dropped eighty gold into his hand.

“Passage for two.”


End file.
